
ClassExX-^S 
BookHA^SlS) 




MOTHER MARY BAPTIST RUSSELL, ST. MARY'S HOSPITAL, 
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA. 



THE LIFE 



Mother Mary Baptist Russell 

SISTER OF MERCY 



BY HER BROTHER 

THE REVEREND 
/ 

Matthew Russell, S.J. 



NEW YORK 
THE APOSTLESHTP OF PRAYER 

1901 



THE LIBRARY OF 

CONGRESS, 
Two Copies Received 

MAR 19 1901 

Copyright entry 

CLASS <^XXe.N». 

COPY 8. 



3X^705 



Copyright, The Apostxeship of Prayer, 1901. 



• • ••• 



CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

PREFACE ...... 7 

CHAPTER I. 

EARLY LIFE IN KILLOWEN . . . .II 

CHAPTER II. 

CONVENT LIFE AND FIRST MISSIONS . . 26 

CHAPTER III. 

HER FIRST MISSION — SAN FRANCISCO . . 36 

CHAPTER IV. 

BEGINNING OF THE MISSION IN SAN FRANCISCO . 47 

CHAPTER V. 

THE LETTERS OF MOTHER MARY BAPTIST RUSSELL 60 

CHAPTER VI. 

SISTER MARY AQJTIN (ELIZABETH RUSSELL) . 67 

CHAPTER VII. 

IN CHARGE OF THE SMALLPOX HOSPITAL . . 75 

CHAPTER VIII. 

BACK TO THE GOLDEN GATE . . . 8 J 

5 



6 CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER IX. 
SOME INTERESTING BETTERS . . 106 

CHAPTER X. 

LOVE OF THE POOR AND AFFLICTED . . 112 

CHAPTER XI. 

INFLUENCE OF HER CHARACTER . . 1 24 

CHAPTER XII. 

FOUNDATIONS AND CHARITABLE WORKS . 1 34 

CHAPTER XIII. 

LAST ILLNESS AND DEATH . . . 1 65 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Mother Mary Baptist Russell 

Sugar Island Bridge, Taylor Hill, Newry 

House in which the Children of Arthur and Margaret Rus- 
sell were born 

Warrenpoint, Midway Between Newry and Killowen. . . . 

Seafield, Killowen . . . . 

Rostrevor. View from steps of Catholic Church 

Rev. Charles Russell, D.D 

The Late Rev. Hugh Gallagher 

The Late Most Rev. Joseph Alemany, O. P 

St. Joseph's Convent of Mercy, Kinsale 

Choir in Convent Chapel, Kinsale 

Sister Mary Francis Benson 

Sister Mary Gabriel Brown 

Convent of Mercy, Newry 

Catholic Cathedral, Newry . . 

Margaret Russell 

The Grave of Arthur and Margaret Russell 

Rev. Patrick O'Neill, P.P., Rostrevor 

Sir John and Lady Gilbert 

Lord Russell of Killowen, Chief Justice of England . . . 

The Rev. Matthew Russell, S. J 

St. Mary's Hospital, San Francisco . ,. 

The Chapel in St. Mary's Hospital 

St. Joseph's Convent, Sacramento 

Convent of Our Lady of Lourdes, East Oakland 

St. Hilary's Sanitarium 

Old Women's Home, San Francisco 

Arthur Hamill, Q. C 

Memorial Cross, St. Michael's Cemetery . . . 



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PREFACE. 

/^vNE of the witnesses cited in the following pages 
deposes to the fact that once, in speaking of 
the subject of this sketch to a lay sister at Newry, 
I said : tl Perhaps I may write a book about her 
some day." And now after thirty years the prophe- 
cy is fulfilled. 

I have described Mother Baptist's life in a very 
unconventional manner, piecing together all the 
testimonies I could gather as to her work and char- 
acter and conduct. Those who knew her com- 
plain — for they have read this account as it appeared 
by instalments in the American Messenger of the Sa- 
cred Heart — they from their riper knowledge com- 
plain that what is here set down gives a very inade- 
quate idea of a noble woman who did a noble work. 
Part of the blame may fall on the fact that, during 
most of the period covered by our narrative, the 
annalist of the San Francisco Sisters of Mercy was 
Mother Baptist herself, who took good care that her 
personal share of the work should be ignored in the 
official record. Even this imperfect sketch, how- 
ever, will help its readers to realize the position she 

7 



8 PRKFACK. 

occupied in the esteem of the outer world and in 
the hearts of her own little kingdom ; and they 
will probably conclude that she was indeed a " vali- 
ant woman " of exceptional natural and supernatural 
gifts, who performed with great perfection the task 
assigned to her by God, and who was manifestly 
equal to much greater toils and greater sacrifices if 
God had asked them from her. 

I have drawn largely from the letters that were 
placed at my disposal; but if I had been able to 
study them more carefully, I might have enlarged 
and yet condensed my sketch. For instance towards 
the beginning, here is a characteristic little glimpse 
of a child seven or eight years old. u Miss 
Cunningham and I were confirmed the same day, 
and I can distinctly remember, on the day we were 
examined by Dr. Blake of blessed memory, that she 
was crying with fright and I was quite at my ease 
and wondering at her tears.'' 

The editor of the Messenger thought it better to 
omit in a Jesuit periodical several passages which 
expressed Mother Baptist's gratitude to certain 
Fathers of the Society for their goodness to her and 
her veneration for the Order. One of her Nuns 
mentions that, when she playfully told Mother Bap- 
tist that, if she had been a man, she would have been 



PREFACE. ■ 9 

a distinguished lawyer like her well-known brother , 
she smiled and said, "No, I should have been a 
Jesuit." 

This allusion to her brother affords an excuse for 
inserting here a belated extract from one o Mother 
Baptist's letters. After speaking of a cousin of the 
same name who had just died, she goes on : " Our 
own dear Charles seems to prosper in every way. 
I only hope God is not allowing more success than 
is good for his eternal interests. His ' Woes to the 
Rich ' are frightful. As charity is one of the chief 
means of turning riches to o-ood account for here- 
after, I must [then she suggests certain charitable 
works.] I must also find out if he has sent a piano 
I asked him to send to our poor Sisters in a very 
poor place in England." This last sentence speaks 
well for both brother and sister. It is harder to ask 
another to do a charitable deed of that sort than 
it would be to do it oneself if it were in one's power. 

This sister and brother, who have many points of 
resemblance in character, died in the same month of 
August, two years apart. It was Lord Russell of 
Killow 7 en who, to my surprise, suggested that our 
sister's life ought to be written. This attempt at 
fulfilment of his wish is now dedicated affectionately 
to his memory. May they both rest in peace. 

M. R. 



MARY BAPTIST RUSSELL 

Pioneer Sister of Mercy in California. 



" A woman," answered Percivale, " a nun, 
And one no further off in blood from me 
Than sister ; and if ever holy maid 
With knees of adoration wore the stone, 
A holy maid. ' ' — Tennyson. 

CHAPTER I. 

EARLY LIFE IN KIIXOWEN. 

IN the first week of August, 1898, the three or four 
principal newspapers of San Francisco, even in 
the midst of the excitement of the Cuban War, 
devoted long columns for several days to minute 
accounts of the illness and death, and then the life of 
the Superior of the Sisters of Mercy in that city, of 
which she was perhaps the oldest inhabitant or at 
least the earliest of surviving residents. These secu- 
lar journalists did not allow a career of great public 
utility and great private holiness to come to an end 
unnoticed ; but those for whom Mother Baptist Rus- 
sell was more than a remarkable woman have thought 
that some fuller and more permanent record should be 
made of her works and her virtues. As a beginning, 
the present sketch was attempted ; and it was pub- 
lished in a magazine in that mighty country to which 
forty-four out of her sixty-nine years were devoted. 

Katherine Russell was the third child of Arthur, 
son of Charles Russell of Killough, and Margaret, 



12 MARY BAPTIST RUSSELL 

daughter of Matthew Mullan, of Belfast. Killough 
is a small seaport and fishing station in the north 
of County Down, five miles southeast of St. Patrick's 
grave at Downpatrick. In that good barony of 
I^ecale the Russells had planted themselves in the 
thirteenth century, and they are there still. At the 
change of religion under Henry VIII. and Anne 
Boleyn these Celtic Normans did not change, but kept 
the Faith through all the penal days. There is at 
present at Killough a chalice with this inscription : 
"Presented by George Russell and his wife, Mary 
Taaffe, to the church of Rathmolin, 1640." This 
George Russell was a member of the Catholic Con- 
federation of Kilkenny and was killed in the battle of 
Tircroghan, righting of course on the Irish side. 

Arthur Russell's children, however, were not born 
at Killough, for he had meanwhile migrated from the 
north to the south of County Down. He himself was 
born at Killough on the 9th of July, 1785. There 
were not many openings for Catholic lads in those 
days, and Arthur Russell joined the merchant service, 
persevering long enough to become captain of a ship 
of his own, trading chiefly with Norway. But before 
his marriage (January 17, 1825) — perhaps with a 
view to it, modifying the old sophism post hoc, ergo 
-pi'opier hoc — he had given up the sea and purchased 
the South wark brewery at Newry. l 

Newry was at that time a rival to Belfast. Though 
it has since been left far behind by the northern capi- 
tal, it was then perhaps more than its equal in com- 



1 In John Rocque ? s map in 1760 the present Queen Street is 
called " Bally bot, otherwise Southwark." 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. I 3 

mercial advantages; and it had certainly a greater 
number of Catholic inhabitants and of priests. A few 
years earlier, the year that Arthur Russell's younger 
brother Charles (who was afterwards to be the Presi- 
dent of Maynooth) was born — 181 2 — the Rev. Wm. 
Crolly, afterwards Primate, had charge of Belfast 
parish, thirty miles long, with only one curate and 
one small chapel in a mean back-lane of Belfast 
capable of holding only about one hundred and fifty 
worshippers. The priests and churches within that 
district may now be counted by the hundred. Newry 
on the other hand was then and always the residence 
of the Bishop of Dromore, whose Cathedral, however, 
was only what is now called affectionately "The Old 
Chapel" — the first stone of the present beautiful 
church of St. Patrick being laid in the very year of 
the marriage just referred to — the year of the jubilee 
to which L,eo XIII. has alluded so touchingly in 
announcing the Jubilee for the end of the century. 1 

Many years later, whenever a certain junior member 
of that Newry household heard the bell of the Protes- 
tant church booming across the Glanrye through the 
hush of the Sunday noon, he felt it as a sort of symbol 
of Protestant ascendanc}^, never dreaming that it would 
be drowned as it is now by the magnificent peal of the 
Catholic Cathedral that makes itself heard at Bessbrook 
three miles away. 

Newry is very beautifully situated in the valley 

1 Father Felix McLaughlin, P.P., Donoughmore near Newry, 
who was born in 1825, tells me that year was called "The 
Year of the Short Corn" and that the Protestants laid the 
blame of the bad harvest upon the jubilee. The corn was so 
short that it could not be reaped, but was pulled like flax. 



14 MARY BAPTIST RUSSELL 

(or, as it is called locally, the L,ow Ground) through 
which the Glanrye, more generally known as the Newry 
river, after a short winding course flows into Carling- 
ford Bay — in that valley and on the hills that rise on 
either side. In this frontier town of the North, as 
Newry is fond of calling itself, Katherine Russell, the 
subject of this sketch, was born on the 18th of April, 
1829. The long fight for Catholic Emancipation had 
just been won by the passing of the Catholic Relief 
Bill on the fifth of that very month ; and, when the 
baby was brought to her mother, she cried over her, 
calling her her first free-born child. Two sisters had 
preceded her, Mary and Elizabeth ; and her immediate 
successor in the nursery (to the disgust of the eldest 
sister who complained that there were already enough of 
them) 1 was another sister, Sarah, who was followed 
by two brothers. Of these last the elder was to be 
afterwards well-known as Sir Charles Russell, Glad- 
stone's last Attorney-General in England — the first 
Catholic to hold that position since the Reformation. 
It is unnecessary to add, even on the other side of the 
Atlantic, that he is now L,ord Russell of Killowen, 
Chief Justice of England. 

The name that we have just mentioned will perhaps 
justify us in giving some particulars more minute than 
a sketch like this might seem to call for. For instance, 
in the innumerable biographical notices that have been 



1 There is something pathetic in the grave authority for 
this not very important statement. Dr. Russell, towards the 
end of his theological studies and not yet a priest or professor, 
wrote at the time in a letter that has chanced to survive all these 
years : ' ' I fully agree with poor little Mary that there were 
quite enough of them." 






IN THE LARGEST OF THESE THREE HOUSES THE CHILDREN OF 
ARTHUR AND MARGARET RUSSELL WERE BORN. 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 1 5 

furnished of Mother Baptist's eldest brother by various 
magazines and newspapers, he is sometimes called a 
native of County Down and sometimes of County 
Armagh. Newry is the chief town of the former 
county, which at this point is separated from the County 
Armagh by the river Glanrye. Mr. Arthur Russell's 
house stood (and stands) on the Armagh side of the 
river. The new Local Government Act has just made 
this district for the first time a part of County Down ; 
so that it is only now that the present writer has a legal 
claim to the title he has usurped all his lifetime — he is 
now at last a Count}^ Down man. 

It may be recorded also that the welcome ' ' son and 
heir " was the first of the children born in the roomy, 
substantial house which Arthur Russell built for him- 
self and which is still as fresh and hale as it was seventy 
years ago. It is now No. 50 Queen Street. He built 
also the two adjoining houses, pulling down the smaller 
house, in the gardens behind, which he had previously 
occupied and in which Katherine Russell and her three 
sisters w r ere born. 

For the sake of a very interesting name that is mixed 
with the reminiscence, we may mention that one of 
Mr. Russell's tenants, the occupant of the middle house 
of the three, was Captain Verner, brother of Sir William 
Verner, Bart. , then a strong pillar of the Orange party ; 
and that at the same time the chief Newry attorney, 
Sam Frazer, had a clever young apprentice called John 
Mitchel, son of a Unitarian minister in the town. The 
Mitchels lived not far away in Dromalane, which is a 
continuation of Queen street to the country — in the 
same house to which, by an extraordinary combination 
of circumstances, the author of The Jail Journal was, 



1 6 MARY BAPTIST RUSSELL 

after many vicissitudes and twenty-seven years of 
imprisonment and exile, to return at last to die, March 
20, 1875. x 

Not his death, however, but his marriage connects 
John Mitchel with the birthplace of Mother Baptist 
Russell ; for her next-door neighbor, Jane Verner, a 
schoolgirl of seventeen summers, in 1837, married 
against her father's will young Mitchel, who was barely 
of age and still in his apprenticeship. Thank God, 
several of their children became Catholics, with the full 
consent of their gifted father, who had always high prin- 
ciples and generous sentiments. He was a staunch 
defender of the Pope. Judge O'Hagan, who was at 
this time a boy in Newry also, told me that Michael 
had often implied that he would become a Catholic if 
he could but pray. 

Like this remarkable man who stole his youthful 
bride almost from the home that we have described, 
Kate Russell, the little girl whom John Mitchel must 
have often met in his walks in that direction, was 
destined also to make her way to the United States, 
through less stirring vicissitudes, however, and not 
via Kilmainham and Tasmania. She was a sensible, 
healthy child, not unpleasantly precocious, but very 
bright and good. " The child is father to the man," 
is, perhaps, more fully verified when the sex is 



This house, in which by another curious chance, honest 
John Martin also died a week after his friend, was afterward 
enlarged and beautified as the home of an eminently useful and 
worthy citizen of Newry, Thomas D'Arcy Hoey, whose brother, 
John Cashel Hoey, was Sir Charles Gavan Duffy's coadjutor 
and then successor as editor of The Nation, and afterward Dr, 
W. G. Ward's literary editor of The Dublin Review, 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. IJ 

changed. At an unusually early age Kate was pre- 
sented for the sacrament of Confirmation to the new 
Bishop, Dr. Michael Blake. Though then at the 
beginning only of his Episcopal career of twenty-seven 
years, he was already very old and venerable looking, 
and he was always exact and somewhat austere ; but 
the youthful candidate, nothing daunted, complained 
only of the easiness of the test to which she was sub- 
jected by him, and begged of his Lordship to propose 
some of the harder questions further on in the Cate- 
chism. She had still to wait some years before she 
was allowed to make her First Communion, which 
she received in the old chapel of Killowen in the year 
1 84 1, on the same day that the oldest of her brothers 
was confirmed. Dr. Blake reserved to himself the 
sacred and consoling duty of administering both these 
sacraments to the lambs of his flock. The notes I 
am here following state that that was the only year 
the " old Bishop," as he was already called twenty 
years before his death, came to Killowen for this pur- 
pose ; all the other years the Killowen boys and girls 
had to make their way to Rostrevor. 

But our narrative has not reached its Killowen 
stage. Between Katherine Russell's Confirmation in 
Newry and her First Communion in Killowen many 
things occurred. Her father's health gave way ; the 
brewery was leased to the firm of Carroll & D' Arcy ; 
and it was decided to seek a warmer climate in France, 
where the two elder girls would have special advan- 
tages for their education. These plans were upset by 
the sudden illness of the eldest, Mary. She died oj 
fever in her thirteenth year, on the 28th day of June, 
1838, the day of Queen Victoria's coronation. The 



1 8 MARY BAPTIST RUSSELL 

town was illuminated that night, and, as the house 
which the little corpse sanctified was in darkness, two 
young men stood outside to explain the cause to any 
loyal passerby who might be scandalized. 

This sorrow altered the arrangements, and the 
thought of going to France was given up. 

While endeavoring to procure a small farm that 
might furnish some occupation and interest to the 
gentle paterfamilias, the family pitched their tents for 
some months at Rostrevor in a quaint old " bow-win- 
dow' ' house which disappeared long ago, the site 
being at present occupied by the Presbyterian church, 
on your right, as, coming from Warrenpoint, you 
approach the rising ground on which Rostrevor stands. 
That was the roof that sheltered the young folk in 
whom we are interested on ' ' The Night of the Big 
Wind," as the people still call the terrific storm that 
raged over Ireland and England on the 6th of January, 
1839. This hurricane prostrated giants by the hun- 
dred all round leafy Rostrevor ; and trees that had 
been the victims of its fury afforded delightful rides 
on their huge branches to a set of merry children for 
months afterwards, when early in the new year they 
finally settled down at Seafield in Killowen. 

But it seems that there are at least four Killowens 
in Ireland — in Cork, in Wexford, in Derry, and in 
Down. This last is of course the Killowen of Killo- 
wens, some ten miles to the east of Newry and 
separated from Rostrevor by a mile of delightful road- 
way, where the trees of Rostrevor Wood arch over 
your head and the waters of Carlingford Bay sparkle 
down below you, almost within a stone's throw. 
About two miles further on, removed from the high 




SEAFIELD, KILLOWEN. 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 1 9 

road to Kilkeel and Newcastle by two or three fields, 
and w r ith another couple of fields between it and the 
beach stands the snug dwelling that was to be 
Katherine Russell's home during all the remaining 
years of what she called her life in the world. 

Not that Killow r en was by any means a discovery 
reserved for the year that began wdth the Big Wind. 
For many years before, as soon as the hot months 
began, the Newry children had made their way eagerly 
to their simple seaside home in that summer haunt of 
their predilection — generally Nelly Crilly's roomy, 
substantial cottage that faces you at that corner where 
the road divides into two — the upper road toiling up 
Gilmore's Hill, long and steep ; the lower road keeping 
to the level ground nearer to the sea, round by Killo- 
wen Point. They were therefore, used to the Killo- 
wen air during many long sunny summers before they 
came to live there, w T inter and summer. 

Seafield, with its compact little territory of sixteen 
acres stretching down to the shore, was an old-fashioned, 
comfortable house lying in the shelter of a short range 
of the Mourne Mountains, between Slieve Ban and 
Croagh Shee, and looking over the Lough to the old 
historic town of Carlingford, which, with its King 
John's Castle, was distinctly visible from the door 
across some two miles of waves. A wing was added 
for its new inmates, and a pleasant porch, w r hich has 
since disappeared, along with the gravelled sweep in 
front, the careful raking of which was one of the 
Saturday evening sounds in preparation for the holy 
silence of a rural Sunday. 

The old chapel, which was never know T n by the 
name of any patron saint, w 7 as within a short half- 



20 MARY BAPTIST RUSSELL 

hour's walk, and for some years to come it was, sum- 
mer after summer, the scene of Confirmation or First 
Communion of one or other of the younger members 
of the household, beginning, as we have before said, 
with her for whose sake these old times and places are 
recalled. Some twenty years later it was the scene of 
the Yelverton marriage, which became the subject of 
one of the causes celebres of the century. There was 
one great bond of union between these newcomers and 
the people of the place. They were all Catholics — not 
more than one or two Protestant families in the whole 
half-parish. A great many years after, the youngest 
of the Seafield family, in the pulpit of the Rostrevor 
church, drawing, as he confessed, upon his memory 
rather than on his fancy, described a species of poverty 
which is blessed by God. This was (he said) " the 
poverty which does not condemn to idleness and de- 
spair, and crime, but only to unceasing labor and 
many privations endured with resignation — the poverty 
that is able and willing to accept that condition which 
for fallen man is not a curse so much as a punishment, 
nay, almost a blessing : ' In the sweat of thy brow 
thou shalt eat thy bread ' — out in the fields, under 
God's sunshine and God's rain, and in the simple 
homesteads, where constant, cheerful toil, where 
honest Christian pride, where the attachments of 
race and home are powerful allies with religion and 
all her sacramental and unsacramental graces in en- 
abling so many to practise great virtues, almost 
without knowing them to be virtues, — where half 
a parish is but as one family, all taking an in- 
terest in each other's fortunes, all taking shame 
in each other's faults, and thus making human 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 2 1 

respect (so often an incentive to evil) the check of pas- 
sion and the safeguard of all good — where enmities 
and scandals are as utterly unknown as crime, — where 
the unvarying round of duties discharged day by day, 
year after year, hardly leaving space for he simplest 
pleasures, makes of the blessed Sunday a true and a 
doubly welcome day of rest — where the salutary ordi- 
nances of the Church are observed with filial docility, 
the plain homelike chapel crowded every Sunday, and 
then on the great Feasts, so many gathered round the 
Communion-rails, though all this does not imply mere- 
ly a few minutes' walk to a street hard by, but often a 
journey of many toilsome miles, down and up steep 
mountain roads in all weathers — where in these ways 
and a thousand others the pure strong faith of Irish 
Catholic hearts avows itself and points toward heaven, 
and cools the summer's heat, and makes the wintry 
blast less keen and the burden of life so much easier to 
bear; this is not wealth, this is not abject poverty, 
but I think that in the eyes of the angels this is not the 
least enviable of human lots; and this is, or at least 
used to be, Killowen. " 

During the w r hole period of this wholesome and happy 
life in Killowen, the children were in the care of a lady 
of great worth and abilit}^ Miss Margaret O'Connor. 
She was always treated, as she well deserved, with the 
most absolute respect and confidence, which I have since 
frequently contrasted with the "only a governess " 
of poetry, and also too often of the prose of real life. 
The most advanced of her pupils w y as the second eldest 
of the bright little band. Avery strictly disciplined 
band it was, but as healthy and happy as possible — 
with a wholesome monotony of work and play varied 



22 MARY BAPTIST RUSSKIX 

by no more exciting events than week day walks or 
Sunday drives or occasionally a climb to the top of one 
of the mountains above us, or a row (not a sail) to 
Carlingford or Greenore, or the yearly fair at Green- 
castle (long since abolished). The Californian Sister 
of Mercy will hereafter look back to these scenes with 
wistful affection. Allusions to Killowen memories oc- 
cur in her letters thirty and forty years later. Writ- 
ing in 1892, she asks about the old woman who took 
care of the chapel: ( 'Is Sally Bradley gone to her 
heavenly home ? Will you ever forget the holly and 
ivy about the altar in Killowen from Christmas to 
March? Poor old soul, she was good and simple." 

In 1844 the two eldest girls were placed in a school 
in Belfast ; but in May, 1845, they were summoned 
home to the death-bed of their father, who died on the 
29th of that month. May he rest in peace. 

Here I will follow the recollections of one of the 
orphans — if that sad name could be given to children 
who were still to enjoy for twenty years more the care 
of the wisest and best of mothers. 

"Lonely and sad Seafield was to us all that sum- 
mer, the dear father's loss felt daily more and more. 
It was the year when the potato blight first appeared, 
and the gloomy prognostications of famine were only 
too truly realized in the succeeding three years. The 
blighted fields seemed withering away under the curse 
of God; and the misery, desolation and death all over 
the land are matters of sad history. As regarded us, 
it was resolved that we should dispose of Seafield and 
take up house again in Newry. This we did in De- 
cember, 1845. A new and very happy life began for us 
in the dear old place. First, our earliest friends, the 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 23 

Jennings family, welcomed us and were so kind. That 
first Christmas, which otherwise would have been a 
lonely one in our half-settled house, was spent in that 
hospitable home, and I never forgot the picture of 
comfort, peace and genial kindness the Christmas din- 
ner table presented. Similar happy social evenings 
came often, and were a new pleasure to us after our 
secluded life in Killowen. 

" It was not in social pleasures, however, that our 
happiness lay, but in the riches of religious enjoyment 
that opened up to us : the morning Mass, the weekly 
Confession which we were soon allowed by our holy 
confessor, and Holy Communion each week and oft- 
ener after a time. The Sunday filled with devotions 
— several Masses, sermons, Benedictions, teaching 
catechism and Vespers — made that day truly the 
lord's day for us from beginning to end. And 
through the week the daily visit to our L,ord in the al- 
ways open church was a happiness not known before. 

1 ' It is now that dear Kate comes in more promi- 
nently than she has done in my recollections up to this. 
She was at home the comfort and resource of every 
one in the house. Always cheerful and equal in 
temper, kind, self-forgetful, thoughtful for others, 
helpful, untiring in her round of house duties ; all 
loved her and looked to her in their pains and pleas- 
ures, and she had a heart for all. She was a comfort- 
able little housekeeper, a good mender of torn gar- 
ments, and she got employment especially at the 
stocking-basket. ' ' After mentioning sundry branches 
of a girl's education in which she excelled, the writer 
goes on : ic These were all given up, as she thought 
she would never need them in after life ; for she had 



24 MARY BAPTIST RUSSEIyL 

made up her mind to be a nun in an Order which 
served the poor only. She entered with all her heart 
into the religious advantages our new life presented, 
and joined to it earnest, self-sacrificing service of the 
poor. Those were the dreadful famine-years, and 
cholera followed the famine. Our dear mother was 
ever foremost in works of charity, and, when a ladies' 
Society was established for the clothing and relief of 
the poor, she was chosen president, while Kate was an 
untiring and most zealous member. Between visiting 
the sick and poor in their wretched homes, and col- 
lecting from door to door the weekly subscriptions of 
those who were a little better off, and also preparing 
her share of the clothing which was distributed to the 
poor, Kate's whole time was devoted at this terrible 
crisis to what was to be the work of her life." 

I should say that it was these charitable labors that 
gained for her the grace of a religious vocation, if I did 
not believe that she was already in her heart a Sister 
of Mercy. Early in the year 1848, the last of her 
teens, she manifested her desire and begged for her 
mother's permission to consecrate herself to God in the 
religious state. 

She was not, however, the first of her mother's 
children to chose such a vocation. Before the point that 
we have reached, as far back as the year 1834, an event 
had occurred of some importance in this little chronicle : 
not the birth of the chronicler — which was chiefly im- 
portant for himself — but the departure from the fire- 
side circle of the first nun of the family. Mrs. Russell, 
or as we should rather call her in this context, Marga- 
ret Mullan — was born October 13, 1791, and at a very 
early age married a Belfast merchant, Mr. John Hamill, 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 25 

who was taken from her suddenly before her thirtieth 
year, leaving her with three sons and three daughters, 
for whom, however, young as he was, he had made 
prudent provision. One daughter died in childhood, 
and one son on the verge of manhood. Of the two re- 
maining sisters, Margaret Hamill married Peter Mc- 
Evoy Gartlan, a man of exceptional abilit3^, as may be 
inferred from the fact that, though practising his pro- 
fession as solicitor in Dundalk and not in Dublin, he 
was one of three chosen to conduct the defence of 
' ' O' Connell and Others ' ' in the famous State Trials of 
1844. The brilliant articles on the subject in the 
Dublin Review, with vivid portraits of the men en- 
gaged in that mighty legal tournament, were from his 
pen. We may mention here, out of due season, that 
two of Mrs. Gartlan' s children became Sisters of Mercy 
in the very beautiful and flourishing Convent of Tip- 
perary. James Hamill, the eldest brother, tried his 
fortune in South America; but though a man of 
good ability and blameless life, he had not much 
worldly success. Arthur Hamill, Q. C, was County 
Court Judge for Roscommon and Sligo at the time of 
his death, July 20, 1886. It will hereafter be neces- 
sary to quote letters of Mother Baptist, showing her 
affection and admiration for this excellent man ; but 
reference has been made to him at this point, because 
his other sister was, as we have said, the first nun of 
the household. 



CHAPTER II. 

CONVENT UFE AND. FIRST MISSIONS. 

Up to the epoch of Catholic Emancipation there were 
few convents in Ireland. Two or three communities 
had managed to keep up a stealthy existence in Dublin, 
Galway, and Drogheda, through all the penal times. 
The Presentation Nuns are a century old. 

It was not these, however, nor the still more recent 
Institutes of Irish Sisters of Charity or Sisters of 
Mercy that were the first to penetrate into the Black 
North. The Newry Convent of Poor Clares was 
founded in 1830 from the Dublin Convent of the 
Order at Harold's Cross. Before that time the most 
northern Convent was the Sienna Convent of Domini- 
canesses at Drogheda ; and it was still many a year be- 
fore the Sisters of Mercy ventured to Belfast and 
Derry. At present they are doing their blessed work 
in every town, large and small, of the North, as well as 
of the South, East and West. 

When the Sisters of St. Clare made their home beside 
the Presbyterian Church where John Mitchel's father 
then officiated, and which, now disused, guards the 
grave where he himself is buried with his father and 
mother — Anna Hamill was only fourteen. She had to 

26 




w 

H 

en 

o 




REV. CHARLES RUSSELL, D.D. 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 27 

wait four years before joining them ; but early in 1834 
she left her happy home one morning, crossed the 
town, climbed the steep ascent beyond (called most 
truthfully High Street,) and entered the convent gate 
which she never passed through again. As Sister Mary 
Bernard, she lived sixty peaceful years in joyous sim- 
plicity and innocence till her death, May 23, 1894, in 
her 78th year. 

The second nun of the family, she whose story we 
are telling, was only seven years old when the youth- 
ful Maynooth professor, Charles William Russell, 
preached what was probably his first public sermon at 
the profession of Sister Mary Bernard Hamill, in 1836. 
She had to wait for what at that age seems the long 
period of ten years before she could set about deter- 
mining her vocation ; and, when she was old enough 
to make it a practical question, she did not feel drawn 
to the only convent with which she was personally ac- 
quainted. One who has a right to know conjectures 
that Gerald Griffin's musical and fervent lines about 
the Sister of Charity, that she was fond of repeating, 
had some share in making her at first desire to be en- 
rolled among the Daughters of Mary Aikenhead, 
whom she then knew rather as Daughters of Vincent 
de Paul, the saint of her predilection. Her mother's 
wishes, however, and the counsels of the old Bishop, 
Dr. Blake, made her finally seek admission into the 
Institute of Mercy, founded by Mother Macaulay. 

As the bright, affectionate, hoirfe-loving maiden was 
in the end to go as far away from her home as the 
girth of this small globe permits, so she began by 
going as far away as the length of this small island 
permits. The selection, however, of the Kinsale Con- 



28 MARY BAPTIST RUSSKIX 

vent of Mercy was due chiefly to the intimate friend- 
ship between Father Denis Murphy, the parish priest 
of Kinsale, and Dr. Russell of Maynooth, who was the 
guardian of Arthur Russell's children. Mrs. Russell 
paid a visit of inspection to the Southern Convent, and 
was greatly attracted by the Mother Superior, Mary 
Francis Bridgeman, afterwards prominent as the leader 
of the band of Sisters who nursed the sick and wounded 
soldiers at Scutari during the Crimean war. She was 
particularly delighted with the immense amount of 
good.wrought amongst the poor, especially through the 
work-schools. The hard task of selling the produce 
of the girls' industry was from that time one of the 
many works of charity to which her busy days were 
devoted. She spared neither time nor money in order 
to effect sales, travelling wherever there was a friend 
or acquaintance that might be tempted to purchase 
some of the excellent plain and ornamental work pro- 
duced by the well-appointed schools of St. Joseph's, 
Kinsale. She never spared herself, and (harder still) 
she did not spare others. The only one of her letters 
that chances to be in my hands, illustrates her ca- 
pacity for this hiphiline 1 form of almsgiving, which 
for many is far more difficult than putting their hand 
into their own pocket. This letter was addressed to 
the Rev. Charles O'Hare, then in the first year of his 
priesthood. He became parish priest of Ballinahinch, 
and died several years ago. May he rest in peace ! 



iThis adjective will be sought for in vain in the diction- 
aries. There is, I am told, in the Hebrew grammar, a division 
of verbs in hiphil which signify " making others do the thing 
in question." 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 29 

Newry, 31st December, 1851. 
Rev. Dear Sir : 

I cannot express how grateful we feel for your kind and 
holy remembrance of us, where we would most wish to be 
remembered, at God's holy altar. May His grace and 
blessing be your reward ! {Here comes in a paragraph 
about a Maynooth student of two months' standing, .] 

You cannot think how anxiously I looked for a letter 
from you about the vestments. Week after week since I 
saw you last, I have hoped to receive your directions to 
forward them to Lurgan. Perhaps, if the}- were really in 
your hands, Mr. McKay might feel bound to exert himself 
in disposing of some of them. He certainly did hold out 
great encouragement and said if they were sent to him by 
Mr. O'Hare, that he had no doubt but between you some 
good would be done for the Sisters of Mercy ; for he 
would interest clergymen in the neighboring diocese. It 
was this' that made me so anxious to send them down. 
The bishop took the purple suit since I saw you, but I 
have still six very handsome suits and very moderate in 
price, too, considering the quality. I went to every place 
in Dublin about a month ago, when I was in town, to look 
at vestments and enquire prices ; and in none of them, I 
honestly assure you, did I see such value. 

I wish you were in Newry to-day that you might give 
your countenance to my son Charles at the delivery of his 
essay in the assembl} 7 rooms. You heard, I suppose, that 
the Newry Institute, of which Charles is a member, pro- 
posed a prize for the best essay on ' ' the Age we Live in, its 
Tendencies and Exigencies." The prize was adjudged to 
him, and a request made that he would read or deliver it 
in public for the benefit of the Library Fund of the Insti- 
tute. He could not very well refuse to comply, but I think 
it was scarcely kind or judicious to ask so young a lad to 
come before the public as a lecturer. It is too trying an 
ordeal, and may expose him to the charge of presumption, 



30 MARY BAPTIST RUSSELL 

which, thank God, he does not deserve, for it is with very 
great reluctance he does so. But it is a duty imposed 
upon him, and I hope he will discharge it with credit. 
Wishing you, reverend dear sir, many happy returns of 
the New Year, in which I am joined by all my family, I 
am yours very obediently, 

Margaret Russell. 

The lad of nineteen years, whose first public appear- 
ance is here chronicled, has been since heard of. As I 
have quoted this letter before its time, I may give 
after its time a letter in which Mr. Arthur Russell, two 
or three months before his death, referred to the same 
boy, then only twelve years old. It is curious that 
this tone should be taken by both parents in the only 
two letters that seem to have survived. I give the 
whole o'f this simple letter for the sake of the kind- 
ness and thoughtfulness that it shows. 

Sunday, January 25, 1845. 
My Dear Margaret : 

I received your joint epistles this morning, which gave 
me great pleasure. I find the children don't go to school 
until Monday. Tell them I am very much pleased with 
them all, and I trust they will continue to merit my 
approbation. Tell Charles I see a great improvement in 
his last note. I hope he will continue to improve. I am 
particularly pleased to find he has been so successful in 
his classes. All he wants is application , for I think he has 
the abilities, so the fault must be his own if he don't prove 
himself clever. It has just occurred to me that perhaps-it 

might be an accommodation to Miss to get the use 

of some bed clothes while the girls are with her. Besides, 
it will make them more comfortable, as you have them 
with you there. She will not be so foolish as to be 
offended if you would make the inquiry. Tell Lill the 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 3 1 

geraniums are in fine health. I take great care of them, 
and tell Kate that Sarah did not write to me yet. 

When they are settled, they need not write but monthly, 
unless something particular requires them to do so ; it 
will take up their time, and it is not requisite to write 
oftener. They will find their time short, when it is ex- 
pired. Charles will also write occasionally. 

I am, my dear Margaret, Yours, 

Arthur Russell. 

Some old man, who returned to Ireland, after all his 
friends and relatives were dead, was asked why he had 
done so. "I came back to see the mountains." 
Katherine Russell, when she was just getting ready to 
leave her home and friends, bade good-by to the 
mountains. Her last summer, 1848, was of course 
spent as usual in dear old Killowen, and when on the 
point of returning to Newry to make the last prepara- 
tions for her flight, she arranged with her youngest 
sister and youngest brother to rise very early one 
bright morning in August — so early that the three had 
climbed Slieve Ban, and had run along the topmost 
ridge, in the keen, crisp, bracing mountain air, which 
the sun had not yet had time to warm, till they were 
near enough to Rostrevor to hear the church clock 
strike six down below, and they said the morning An- 
gelus near to the Big Stone. 

Soon after came the parting. One of the two who 
helped her to bid good-by to the mountains, wrote 
lately to the other : " Sadly I missed Kate on my re- 
turn home. There was always something so restful, 
genial and bright about her, that no one near her 
could keep dull or anxious long. She was thoroughly 
sensible, practical and energetic and never understood 



32 MARY BAPTIST RTJSSEIX 

nursing sensibilities or humors — yet forbearing, pa- 
tient, and reasonable, so that you could always talk of 
your little difficulties with her, when they would be 
sure to fade away of themselves." 

In November, 1848, she entered her new convent 
home in Kinsale. What she thought of her new 
mother we learn from a note written forty years later, 
in which she mentions a letter just received from 
Newry, announcing good Mother Bridgeman's death. 
" I need not say pray for her, and ask Father Gleeson 
to please remember her at the altar. She was a noble 
woman and a holy religious.' ' 

The novice from the North had no violent change 
to make in her habits and tone of mind. Years before, 
in a sort of spiritual conference which she used to hold 
with her brothers and sisters in the old Killowen home, 
the subject proposed by her (for she was the guiding 
spirit of the little association) was, "what was the 
best way to become a saint ? " The unanimous opinion 
of the youthful theologians was — "to do our daily 
duties as well as ever we can, and to do them in the 
presence of God, to please Him. ' ' No doubt Kinsale was 
quite content with this sound spirituality of Killowen. 

Sister Mary Baptist, as we may henceforth call her, 
was from the first particularly efficient in the schools. 
She had been solidly educated, and what she did not 
know she was quick to learn, while her quiet firmness, 
her clearness, and her calm judgment, gave her great 
power in instructing the young. 

M O'er wayward children wouldst thou hold firm rule 
And sun thee in the light of happy faces ? 
Ivove, truth and patience — these must be thy graces — 
And in thine own heart they must first keep school." 



PIONKKR SISTER OE M^RCY IN CALIFORNIA. 33 

During her noviceship, Sister Baptist had an ex- 
perience that was to serve her in later years. She was 
allowed to tend the poor creatures stricken with the 
cholera ; for the famine had brought pestilence in its 
train. She had always been remarkable for her skill 
in nursing and comforting the sick and dying ; and 
with all the tenderness of her sympathy, fear was 
unknown to her. 

When the time came for her religious profession, 
Dr. Delaney, the Bishop of Cork, then at the begin- 
ning of his long episcopate, deputed the Bishop of 
Hyderabad to receive her vows. This prelate, Dr. 
Daniel Murphy, was then on a visit with his brother, 
the pastor of Kinsale. He still flourishes in hale old 
age as Archbishop of Hobart in Tasmania, one of the 
most venerable members of the world-wide hierarchy 
of the Catholic Church. I question very much the 
accuracy of Sister Baptist's own statement about the 
degree of spiritual knowledge she possessed at this 
epoch of her life. On February 11, 1882, some of her 
novices were to be professed. She was unable to be 
present and she sent them the following letter : 

My Dear Sisters : 

As I cannot have the happiness of hearing you pro- 
nounce your vows, I will write a few lines to wish you all 
every happiness on the joyous occasion. I know you will 
all make your consecration with fervor, from the very 
depths of your heart, and I am sure dear Mother Gabriel 
has made you fully sensible of the seriousness of the 
irrevocable engagements made by the Religious Profession. 
I must acknowledge I had very vague ideas of it myself 
when I was professed ; but you are all more mature in 
your minds and can enter into it more deeply. 



34 MARY BAPTIST RUSSELE 

You must not now imagine that all is done. On the 
contrary, you are only now beginning. Hitherto you 
were apprentices, learning the principles and rules of 
religious life ; now you must reduce them to practice in 
your daily life. Father Barchi said in one of his retreats, 
that religion is called by spiritual writers a ' ' paradise on 
earth, " but he thought that purgatory would be a more 
appropriate name. The truth is, both names are appro- 
priate. It is a purgatory, as it offers innumerable oppor- 
tunities of performing acts contrary to nature, and it is 
also a paradise on earth, because of the peace enjoyed by 
humble, docile religious, who live by faith, and see God 
in their Superiors, and His will in all the occurrences of life. 

Our Lord assures us a hair does not fall without His 
permission. If we really believe this, how can we be 
over-anxious or worried ? Let us, then, leave ourselves 
humbly and confidently in the hands of Divine Pro- 
vidence, doing all we can to glorify Him by living as true 
religious, real Sisters of Mercy — li gentle, patient, hard- 
working, humble, obedient, charitable, and, above all, 
simple and joyous." You will recognize the words of 
Father Coleridge, S. J., in his "First Sister of Mercy," 
They are beautiful and include everything necessary to 
make us saints. The last is of more consequence than 
most persons imagine. " God loveth the cheerful giver, ' 
and it makes hard things easy, and helps others on the 
hard road as well as ourselves. You know, besides, 
Sister Mary Stanislaus grants an indulgence to everyone 
who causes a laugh at recreation, so gain all the indul- 
gences you can; but it is more habitual holy joy I advo- 
cate. May God bless you all. 

Ever your affectionate Mother, 

Sister M. B. Russell, 

Sister of Mercy. 



PIONEER SISTER OE MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 35 

Perhaps it was while assisting at this final dedica- 
tion of Mary Baptist Russell to the special service of 
God and His poor that her elder sister resolved finally 
to follow her example. Elizabeth Russell was allowed 
to enter the same novitiate that Katherine had just 
passed through, but only with the stipulation exacted 
by her Bishop, Dr. Blake, that she could return (with 
her dowry) to Newry when he should have arranged 
for the establishment there of the Sisters of Mercy. 
This condition also was imposed on Sister Mary Bap- 
tist, who had to be formally released from it before 
taking the next step in her career. Their mother at 
this time, in order to facilitate a new foundation in 
their native town, offered to make over for the pur- 
pose all her property in Ballybot; but the situation of 
those houses was considered unsuitable for a convent, 
and the offer was declined, though this, to one who 
has special opportunities of judging, seems now to 
have been a mistake, such as God sometimes allows 
for some wise end. 



CHAPTER III. 

HKR FIRST MISSION — SAN FRANCISCO. 

When the second, or rather the third, nun of the 
household was half way through her noviceship, in the 
summer of 1854, the Rev. Hugh Gallagher of San 
Francisco, paid a visit to his native land. He was 
empowered by his Bishop, a Spanish Dominican, Dr. 
Alemany, to bring back with him a colony of Irish 
Sisters of Mercy. Mother Vincent Whitty, sister to 
the late Father Robert Whitty, S.J. (formerly Car- 
dinal Wiseman's Vicar General in London), was su- 
perior at that time in the Mother House in Baggot 
Street, which had recently supplied so many new 
foundations that it had not Sisters enough for its own 
work. Father Gallagher was therefore recommended 
to apply to Kinsale, where he arrived on the 28th of 
July, 1854, with the full approval of the Bishop of the 
diocese, Dr. William Delaney. The Kinsale Convent 
was then only eight years old, having been founded 
from Limerick in 1846, and yet the busy hive was 
ready to swarm. 

At that time California seemed to be much farther 
away than we consider it at present; and in reality it 
was a very difficult place to reach, and more difficult 

36 




THE LATE REV. HUGH GALLAGHER. 




THE LATE MOST REV. JOSEPH ALEMANY, 0. P. 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 37 

to live in. This explains the opening words of the 
following passage from that most interesting work, 
"Leaves from the Annals of the Sisters of Mercy," 
Vol. III., page 471 : 

"As the new mission was supposed to entail un- 
usual sacrifices, the Sisters were informed that none 
but volunteers would be accepted. They were coun- 
selled to consider the matter well, pray for divine 
direction, consult their directors and superiors, and on 
a given day all who were ready to go were told to offer 
themselves in writing and put the billets in a box at 
the Oratory of the Sacred Heart. Twenty-nine, 
almost the whole Community, offered, but Bishop 
Delaney would allow only five to go. The Kinsale 
Superior, Mother M. Francis Bridgeman, one of the 
grandest women, both spiritually and intellectually, 
that ever wore the religious- habit, selected from the 
volunteers, with unerring judgment, Sister M. Baptist 
Russell, who had just left the noviate; Sister M. de 
Sales Reddan, who was old enough to be her grand- 
mother; Sister M. Bernard O'Dwyer, Sister M. Fran- 
ces Benson and Sister Mary Howley. 

"To this contingent were added three novices who 
had the courage to offer themselves : Sister M. Ga- 
briel Brown, Sister M. Paul Beechinor and Sister M. 
Martha MacCarthy. Accompanied by Mother Bridge- 
man and Sister Mary Aquin Russell, the whole party 
left Kinsale September 8, 1854." 

As this is a very important crisis in our story, we 
shall give the greater part of a letter received from 
one of the present Community of St. Joseph's, Kinsale, 
describing the incidents more minutely. The ' k loved 



38 MARY BAPTIST RUSSEU, 

old Mother" is, of course, Mother Francis Bridgeman, 
of holy memory. 

"Mother Mary Baptist was one of our loved old 
Mother's most highly esteemed and best beloved 
spiritual children. She often said of her that she 
seemed like one who had never sinned in Adam, and 
that she believed she never allowed self-love to argue 
for a moment with what she had reason to know was 
God's will or good pleasure. This fidelity to grace, 
she thought, had much more to do with her remark- 
able calmness of manner than had her naturally sweet 
temper. She often watched her under trying circum- 
stances, but could never detect a shade of disappoint- 
ment or a ruffle of any kind. 

"When the San Francisco mission was proposed, 
she asked her confessor's advice as to offering herself 
for it. He did not, at first, approve of her doing so, 
and, when she told this to Mother M. Francis, the 
latter looked a little disappointed, but did not wish 
Sister M. Baptist to notice this, and merely said to 
her that she had done her part, and that they must 
look on her confessor's decision as God's will in the 
matter. Sister M. Baptist returned soon to Mother 
M. Francis, saying she feared she had not shown suffi- 
cient desire for the foreign missions when speaking to 
her confessor, and that she would be glad to see him 
again on the subject. Mother M. Francis, fearing she 
might have allowed her own disappointment to appear, 
and that Sister M. Baptist was about to press the 
matter to meet her wishes, questioned her as to her 
views regarding the mission. Her one desire was to 
do God's will, but, if she were sure it was His will 
for her to go on the mission, she thought she would 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 39 

feel somewhat more pleased than otherwise. In a 
second interview her confessor gave his consent, and 
she offered and was accepted, without, however, being 
informed at first that she was destined to be the 
Superior. 

' ' When all the Sisters had been selected for the 
California mission, they were presented to the parish 
priest, as the chosen missioners ; and he casually 
asked which of them was to be Reverend Mother. 
Mother Mary Francis replied that it was Sister Mary 
Baptist ; at which Sister M. B. got slightly pale, and 
the tears started to her eyes, but they were not 
allowed to fall, and when the Sisters surrounded her 
and offered their mingled congratulations and sym- 
pathy, she was as calm and cheerful as usual, and 
received all so cordially and simply that no one could 
form any opinion as to how the announcement affected 
her. When a Sister afterwards remarked to Mother 
M. Francis, that she pitied Sister M. Baptist and 
thought it must be very embarrassing to her to have 
her first intimation of the burden that was to be laid 
on her, made in public, Mother M. Francis replied 
that it certainly was hard, and that she w T ould not 
attempt such a manner of acting with any one else, 
but that she knew Mother Mary Baptist well enough 
to feel sure that she would not betray any undue feel- 
ing on the occasion. She also said that she was not 
sorry to have had an opportunity of trying if anything 
could move her, but that, much as she relied on her 
imperturbable calmness, she had scarcely been pre- 
pared for the total absence of feeling she manifested at 
such an announcement. 



4<3 MARY BAPTIST RUSSELL 

"You x can, no doubt, give some interesting 
details of the generosity shown by her and dear Sister 
Mary Aquin, when your good mother hesitated, for a 
time, about Mother M. B.'s going to San Francisco. 
Sister M. Magdalen says you were here at the time, 
and did }^our part bravely, too. I asked Sister M. 
Magdalen's own opinion of dear Mother Baptist, and 
she said, with tears in her eyes, ' All I have to say of 
her is that she was the most perfect being, in every sense 
of the word, that in my judgment I ever came across.' 

1 ' The same question being put to Sister M. Eliza- 
beth, the only other survivor of those early fifties, she 
said : ' You know how much dear Mother M. Francis 
thought of her ; she was so calm, so perfect, in fact, 
in every way, and how she used to hold her up as a 
model to young Sisters. But what /admired most in 
her was her cordial, affectionate manner in the Com- 
munity, and her great love for the poor. She could 
never see a Sister in any difficulty without trying to 
help her out of it, even at her own great inconve- 
nience, so that many a time she got herself into diffi- 
culties in her effort to get others out of them. As for 
the poor, it used to be one of my greatest ambitions to 
be with her on visitation, especially at the work- 
house. You know the state of misery they were in 
there at the time, and it would touch any heart to see 
her trying to console them and to help them to bear 
their sufferings. However calm she was under her 
own trials, I have known her to shed bitter tears on 
our way home from the workhouse, at the thought of 



1 Mother Mary Emmanuel Russell, to whom this letter is 
addressed by Sister Mary Evangelist. 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 41 

the wretchedness she had witnessed and the little she 
could do to relieve it. Any little extra time or free- 
dom she might chance to have, was always devoted to 
helping or relieving the pbor in some way or other. 
She did many things in this way that others would not 
venture, and that w r ere not always approved of, but 
she did them with so much simplicity and good faith 
that no one could blame her. She was one of the 
most loving and generous souls I ever met.' 

" Tell me, for you were there ! " exclaimed Richard 
Lalor Sheil in his famous reply to Lord Lyndhurst's 
jibe against the alien Irish ; and Sister Evangelist in 
the middle of the foregoing letter makes a similar ap- 
peal to Mother Emmanuel with regard to her recol- 
lection of Mother Baptist's demeanor during this 
trying crisis. Accordingly we transcribe the following 
notes of Kate Russell's youngest sister : 

1 ' We w r ere in Kinsale w T hen the Chapter met to vote 
for the San Francisco foundation and for the Mother 
Superior thereof. Mother Mary Francis told us that, 
when the name of Sister Mary Baptist was announced 
as the chosen one, poor Kate was entirely unprepared 
for it. She started, then bowed dow r n her head for a 
moment, and, w T hen Mother M. Francis saw her face, 
there was not a trace of emotion or excitement, but 
only its usual calm, sweet expression. So accustomed 
was she to regard the wdll of a superior as the will of 
God in her regard, that she never dreamed of remon- 
strance but simply bent her will to God's, no matter 
what effort it cost her. This is w T hat Mother M. 
Francis said of her. ' ' 

This well qualified witness goes on to mention, that, 
as Father Gallagher was obliged to return to America 



42 MARY BAPTIST RUSSELL 

in a few weeks, the preparations of the little band of 
missioners had to be hurried on. She and her mother 
were allowed to be with Sister Mary Baptist constantly. 
"During all that time Kate was as calm and recol- 
lected as if leaving her convent home were a matter of 
every-day occurrence. Once only did her great self- 
control break down, and that was one day when the 
two Nuns, our mother and myself, were busy drawing 
out a quantity of tangled silk, I began to read for them 
some verses you had sent me from Maynooth, in which 
you recalled the old place in Killowen, and the family 
circle there, and since then the way that all were scat- 
tered, leaving me behind alone. It begins : 

" In the dim uncertain twilight 
That the close of evening brings, 
I sit in my lonely chamber 
And think of many things, etc. 

" While I was reading, I saw Kate's head droop a 
little and a tear steal down her face — then, just for a 
moment, she bent with her face on her hands on the 
table, and, when she raised it again, her face, though 
wet with tears, wore its usual calm, sweet expression. 
None of us noticed her emotion, and the work we were 
at went on without a word about it." x 

As Mother Baptist is now leaving Kinsale forever, 



1 This poem which is called " Retrospection," has on 
account of these associations been included in a volume recently 
published by James Bowden, 10 Henrietta Street, London : 
4< Idyls of Killowen. A Soggarth's Secular Verses. " In the 
foregoing extract, "her usual calm, sweet expression" is 
mentioned twice, for no other phrase could describe so well 
Mother Baptist's habitual demeanor. 




CHOIR IN CONVENT CHAPEL, KINS ALE. 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 43 

we transcribe the page of the convent register which 
relates to her: 

14 Sister Katherine Russell, in religion Sister Mary- 
Baptist Joseph, daughter of Arthur and Margaret 
Russell, of Newry, County Down. Born in 1829. 
Entered the Convent of Our Lady of Mercy, St. 
Joseph's, Kinsale, on the 24th of November, 1848. 
Received the holy habit July 7, 1849. Made her 
religious profession August 2, 1851. 1 Offered for 
the Calif ornian Mission, on which she was sent as 
Mother Superior on the 8th of September, 1854." 

In making arrangement for the voyage, Father 
Gallagher met with a happy disappointment. He had 
wished to sail in The Arctic, but he could not secure 
sufficient accommodation for all his party, eighteen in 
number, including some Presentation nuns. He there- 
fore deferred their departure till the 23d of September, 
the eve of the Feast of Our Lady of Mercy. The Arctic 
sailed without them and was lost with all on board. 
Dr. Silliman Ives, who had been Protestant Bishop in 
the United States, and had become a Catholic, had his 
luggage transferred from the ill-fated Arctic to The 
Canada, in order that he might have Father Gallagher's 
company; and thus, still more narrowly, he and his 
wife escaped. 

Those who can turn to the graphic pages of the 
work we have already named, "Leaves from the 
Annals of the Sisters of Mercy," will find a some- 



1 In a letter, dated August 2, 1893, Mother Baptist begins, 
"This day forty-two years ago, myself and that fervent soul, 
Mother Liguori O'Dvvyer, made our profession. She is dead 
many years ; may she rest in peace.' ' 



44 MARY BAPTIST RUSSBI.lv 

what minute account of the voyage to New York, 
(reached on the first Friday of October) and then the 
voyage to Greytown, the journey across the Isthmus 
of Panama, and finally the voyage on the Pacific in 
through the Golden Gate. The contemporary letters, 
written after their arrival are not found in the large 
collection in our hands. I remember that one of 
Mother Baptist's expedients for employing usefully 
the enforced leisure of travel was the vigorous study 
of Spanish, to qualify her for her new surroundings, 
then much less thoroughly Americanized than they 
are now. The band of missionary Nuns had left their 
old home on the Feast of Our Lady's Nativity, Sep- 
tember 8th ; they reached their new home on the 8th 
of December, which was not only the Feast of the 
Immaculate Conception, but the very day on which 
Pius IX, amid the assembled bishops of the world, 
solemnly defined and promulgated that dogma of our 
faith. Our Blessed Lady plainly had the Sisters in her 
safe and holy keeping. This happy omen was, of course, 
adverted to at the time and the memory of it cherished 
every year since then. Thus on the 7th of December, 
1895, Mother Baptist wrote to the compiler of these 
notes: "We are in California forty-one years to- 
morrow, Feast* of the Immaculate Conception and the 
day Pius IX proclaimed it a dogma of our faith. 
Dear old Mother de Sales threw a miraculous medal 
into the mud as we drove from the steamer to St. 
Patrick's Church, and begged our Blessed Lady to 
take us under her protection ; and no doubt she pre- 
served us from many dangers, notwithstanding our 
shortcomings. ' ' 

San Francisco was then in its raw beginnings. Its 



PIONKER SISTKR OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 45 

present Archbishop, Dr. Riordan, told Mother Baptist 
that, when he made his first Communion, there was 
but one Catholic church in Chicago where there were 
at the time that he spoke sixty-four churches. The 
progress of San Francisco was probably still more rapid 
in some respects, if not in the matter of churches : for 
Mother Baptist, reporting Archbishop Riordan's ob- 
servation in a letter, remarks that San Francisco had 
not then half as many churches as Chicago, even in- 
cluding the convent-chapels. But when she first drove 
to St. Patrick's on Market Street, there were only two 
other churches in the place, St. Francis' in Vallejo 
Street and an old adobe church in the Mission Dolores, 
then a suburb, now absorbed into the city. The 
Cathedral was opened, though still unfinished, some 
weeks after the arrival of the Sisters. 

But surely this religious accommodation was won- 
derfully ample when we are reminded that the town of 
San Francisco could hardly be said to be at that time 
ten years old. The name indeed of San Francisco de 
los Dolores had been given to the territory in 1776 by 
the Franciscan Fathers who succeeded the Jesuit 
Missionaries after the suppression of the Society ; but 
the hamlet itself was called Yerba Buena, till about 
the year 1846, when a man-of-war took possession of it 
for the United States. Before 1848 San Francisco, as 
it had begun to be called, had only three hundred in- 
habitants ; but in that year the gold mines were dis- 
covered, and the population increased suddenly month 
by month to 2,000 and 20,000. The figures given for 
the year 1850 are 34,000 ; for i860, 56,800 ; for 1870, 
149,470; for 1880, 233,900; and in 1885, 275,000. 
Later figures are not at hand ; and we need only add 



46 MARY BAPTIST RUSSEIX 

that in the Presidential election of 1884 10,000 of the 
12,800 who had once been British subjects were Irish 
— which is an indication of the strength of the Irish 
element in the population. Evidently by that time 
there was a fine field for the labors of Irish Sisters of 
Mercy. 




SISTER MARY FRANCIS BENSON. 




SISTER MARY GABRIEL BROWN. 



CHAPTER IV. 

BEGINNING OF THE MISSION IN SAN FRANCISCO. 

Things were in a crude state when they began their 
mission. Fifty years later, writing in April, 1896, 
Mother Baptist mentions that fresh eggs (then twenty 
cents a dozen) were three dollars a dozen when they 
had first to buy them. A grimmer trait of those 
primitive times is the statement that we have seen in a 
San Francisco newspaper that between the years 1849 
and 1856 a thousand homicides were committed in the 
little city, and out of these there were only seven con- 
victions. 

Dr. Alemany and his priests received the Sisters 
most kindly. " From the first," wrote Mother Bap- 
tist, " we felt that we had a saint to deal with in the 
Archbishop." He appointed December 12, as his first 
day to celebrate Mass for them, and they wondered 
how he had fixed on the anniversary of the foundation 
of their Order, which was a feast of the first class for 
them ; but they found that this date was also the 
greatest of the Mexican feasts of the Blessed Virgin 
under the title of Our Lady of Guadalupe. 

47 



48 MARY BAPTIST RUSSKlX 

January 2, 1855, they established themselves in a 
small house in Vallejo Street, near the county hos- 
pital. 

By degrees Mother Baptist quietly and prudently 
undertook the various works that were most pressingly 
needed, especially the nursing of the sick and the 
education of the young. The rapidly rising town was 
then very unhealthy, and cholera (introduced by a 
ship Uncle Sam, September 5, 1855) wrought dreadful 
havoc amongst the inhabitants. Mother Baptist used 
with great effect her recent experience of that terrible 
plague in Ireland. She and her Sisters went fearlessly 
into the overcrowded hospital, and their heroic charity 
at once secured for them the love and respect of the 
people. One of their newspapers, The Daily News, 
wrote as follows : 

" We visited yesterday the patients in the hospital ; 
a more horrible and ghastly sight we have seldom wit- 
nessed. In the midst of this scene of sorrow, pain, 
anguish and danger, were ministering angels who dis- 
regarded everything to aid their distressed fellow- 
creatures. The Sisters of Mercy, rightly named, 
whose convent is opposite the hospital, as soon as they 
learned the state of things, hurried to offer their serv- 
ices. They did not stop to inquire whether the poor 
sufferers were Protestants or Catholics, Americans or 
foreigners, but with the noblest devotion applied 
themselves to their relief. One sister might be seen 
bathing the limbs of a sufferer, another chafing the 
extremeties, a third applying the remedies, while 
others with pitying faces were calming the fears of 
those supposed to be dying. The idea of danger never 
seems to have occurred to these noble women ■ they 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 49 

heeded nothing of the kind. If the lives of any of the 
unfortunates be saved, the} 7 will owe their preservation 
to those noble ladies." 

The dreadful epidemic not only opened the doors of 
the hospital to the Sisters, but installed them there 
officially. On fixed conditions they assumed the entire 
control of the institution, October 24, 1855. Of course 
there were many outbursts of bigotry, met by the most 
favorable reports from the Protestant physicians and 
all who were qualified to judge, but, w r hen the sick of 
the County Hospital were transferred in July, 1857, to 
North Beach, the municipal authorities did not invite 
the holy and devoted nurses to accompany them. The 
Sisters rented the vacated premises from the city, 
changing the name t{ State Union and County Hos- 
pital" into "St. Mary's Hospital." Their work 
prospered, and they were obliged to seek a larger 
house, which was found at the meeting of First Street 
and Bryant Street. x Here St. Mary's Hospital has 
gradually grown in extent and in the completeness of 
its equipment until to-day it stands a noble monument 
of the courageous and persevering zeal and energy of 
its foundress. 

Father Slattery of Marysville, who preached an elo- 
quent sermon at the laying of the foundation stone of 



1 The curt American way of giving this address on en- 
velopes suggested the following quatrain to one of Mother 
Baptist's correspondents : 

The best of all possible matches, they say, 
Are those manufactured by Bryant and May, 
And of possible Convents by no means the worst, 
Is the Convent located on Bryant and First. 



50 MARY BAPTIST RUSSKIX 

St. Mary's, died of typhoid fever a month after, under 
the care of the Sisters in the old hospital. It was 
Father King who chiefly collected the funds for build- 
ing the hospital. Indeed all the priests helped the 
Sisters most generously, and very few of the letters 
home, especially in the early years, failed to express 
Mother Baptist's gratitude to her reverend benefactors. 
Naturally her Jesuit brother was duly informed of the 
goodness of his religious brethren. "God bless the 
Jesuits " is a phrase that frequently occurs in her 
letters. Some of these had been fellow-travellers on 
that memorable journey from the Empire City to the 
Golden Gate, which ended on the Feast of the Immac- 
ulate Conception, 1854. The Fathers of the Society 
seemed to have been at first absorbed in the work of 
education. They soon established their college at 
Santa Clara, which has since developed so nobly. Yet 
can the author of "Leaves from the Annals of the 
Sisters of Mercy ' ' be quite accurate in stating that not 
for some months but ( ' for the first few years there 
w r as only one Jesuit in the city, Father Maraschi ? " 
"Nevertheless," she adds, "they (her Californian 
Sisters) never missed a Retreat, and their Retreats 
have always been conducted by Jesuits." Many 
years afterwards, as late as July, 1896, writing to her 
sister in Newry, Mother Baptist remarks apropos 
of certain sudden deaths : ' ' Those two Jesuits 1 in 
The Irish Monthly went unexpectedly. I think the 



1 Evidently Father Denis Murphy, who died May 18, 1896, 
and Father Carton, who died on the fifteenth of the preceding 
month, both in the manner, here described. May they rest in 
peace ! 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 51 

one who went calmly to the Rector and asked to be 
anointed as he felt death at hand had a most enviable 
end. What a sweet faith and conformity of will he 
manifested. Our first Jesuit friend here, good Father 
Maraschi, now very old, is almost blind, but manages 
to do a great deal.'' 

The truest friend, however, to the Sisters was to 
the last their first friend, the first Californian priest 
they had seen, the ambassador from the New T World 
who had invited them to "fresh fields and pastures 
new," though even Father Hugh Gallagher was 
rivalled by his reverend brother, Joseph, in quiet de- 
votion to their interests. Very fitly Father Hugh was 
chosen to preach at the funeral of the Sister who, out 
of this little band of holy emigrants, was the first to 
emigrate to the newest world of all. One is almost 
surprised to find that the oldest of the community was 
the first to die, for death seldom follows a chronolog- 
ical order, and mourners have often complained, like a 
bereaved parent in one of Gerald Griffin's ballads, 

" That death a backward course should hold — 
Should smite the young and spare the old." 

Mother de Sales Reddan was the Aunt of Mother 
Francis Bridgeman of Kinsale, to whom, as to other 
nieces and nephews, she had taken the place of their 
mother. She had founded the Good Shepherd con- 
vent in Limerick, which has now done glorious w T ork 
for souls for more than fifty years. As soon as she had 
placed this and her other works of charity on a perma- 
nent basis, Dr. Ryan, the Bishop of Iyimerick al- 
lowed her to depart, and she placed herself under her 
niece at Kinsale, the most docile and humble of 



52 MARY BAPTIST RUSSELL 

novices. Her zeal and spirit of perfect detachment 
prompted her, as we have seen, to make further sac- 
rifices and to go from World's End 3 to the ends 
of the earth at what seemed to her youthful com- 
panions quite a venerable age, for she was more than 
twice as old as her Mother Superior in San Francisco. 
She caught a fatal cold in July, 1857, while travelling 
by steamer with Mother Baptist to establish their first 
branch at Sacramento City. Her youthful Superior 
wrote of her thus, not when her loss was recent, but 
many years later : 

" I never met any one more forgetful of self or more 
zealous for souls. I have seen her with clasped hands 
and tears coursing down her cheeks, praying for some 
poor hardened sinner. She felt we had a grand field 
for our labors in this country, and her gratitude for 
being assigned to such a mission was unbounded. I 
never could tell you what she was or describe the im- 
pression she made on all with whom she came in con- 
tact. She is remembered and spoken of still, after the 
lapse of so many years, and you know how short her 
career in California was — not quite three years. I did 
not mind so much the feeling manifested at the time 
of her death. It was so sudden that it created a sen- 
sation by that circumstance alone. Besides, she was 
the first religious that died in San Francisco, or even 
in California. But I do really feel astonished when 
some circumstance causes her to be mentioned, and I 



1 This is the name given to a cluster of fishermen's cottages 
on the shore near Kinsale ; at least it was so called in August, 
1854, when the writer climbed up the Stony Steps to bid good- 
bye forever to the subject of the present sketch. 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 53 

see how vivid is the remembrance of her words and 
actions. Even Archbishop Alemany, who seemed a 
regular stoic in his way, more than once alluded to 
her with real feeling. ' ' 

Long before its time the curious circumstance may 
be noted that, as Father Hugh Gallagher preached at 
the obsequies of Mother de Sales, the first Sister of 
Mercy buried in Californian soil, so Father Hugh Gal- 
lagher preached at the obsequies of Mother Baptist 
herself more than forty years later. But in the latter 
case it was a Jesuit nephew and namesake of the good 
old man who had died long before. 

I once heard a good mother pray that all her chil- 
dren might die before her ; and the motive of this 
strange wish was that she might have a share in se- 
curing for each of her dear ones the supreme grace of 
a happy death. Mother Baptist prayed no such prayer 
with regard to the original band of Sisters whom she 
led out to the Xew World ; but, as a fact, she helped 
them all through their last passage into, the newest 
world of all — all of them except one. Sister Mary 
Howley survives her. 

Sister Mary's experience, therefore, goes back to 
Mother Baptist's noviceship. This good lay-sister 
ought to have been summoned earlier as a witness. 
Here is a portion of her testimony : 

"When I entered the convent, Reverend Mother 
was in her nineteenth year. She had entered in No- 
vember, 1848, and I in the following May. When I 
saw her first, she had fair hair, dark eyebrows and 
rosy cheeks, and looked beautiful. While she was a 
postulant, she taught the novices, but she was always 
very humble and made nothing of it. She was ten 



54 MARY BAPTIST RUSSELL 

months a postulant, Mother Francis Bridgeman having 
been called away to Limerick on account of the cholera. 
Mother Francis had always great confidence in her. 
Even in the uoviceship she used to try to excuse the 
Sisters, and Mother Francis pretended not to like it, 
though she afterwards acknowledged that she admired 
her for it. She would say in such a nice, sweet way, 
' Now, Mother, Sister did not mean it that way/ etc. 
Charity was her favorite virtue. She could never see 
a fault in anyone. She could never blame anyone. 
' There was a little fault, perhaps, but a great deal of 
good to cover that.' I was young, but I thought her 
an example to the world. She was so humble, and all 
her family were the same. I never saw an imperfec- 
tion in her, and I always felt as though she were re- 
lated to me. I am sure I gave her a great deal of 
trouble, but she was so patient with me. When I 
would commit an imperfection, she would say, ' Well, 
dear, if you did not commit that, there would be no 
imperfection, and then we might become proud.' She 
was a religious according to God's own heart, and all 
that a Sister of Mercy should be. That is the reason 
Mother Francis sent her out here. I saw Mother 
McAuley, and she always reminded me of her. She 
had a practice of always invoking the Holy Ghost in 
everything she undertook, and I am sure was always 
guided by His Spirit. 

' ' There was a foundation in Clonakilty in question 
before the California foundation, and Mother Francis 
had her in her mind as the Superior of it, but she did 
not know it. Father Hugh Gallagher then came to 
Kinsale to apply for a foundation for California. 
Mother Francis did not at first approve of it, and it 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 55 

was unsettled for a while. She had heard some strange 
stories about California, and feared the Sisters would 
be scalped, and would not give her consent to let any 
of her children go. There was a young man, a lace 
merchant, who happened to call at the convent after 
leaving California, and she questioned the young man 
about the laws here, and how everything was. He 
told her that the law was that every law-breaker was 
punished according to what he deserved. This re- 
lieved her, and she afterwards felt more at ease. 
Father Hugh told her that the Sisters would have a 
convent when they arrived. She discussed matters 
with him, but did not agree with him on some things, 
so it was postponed. He then came to her and told 
her that she was going against the will of God and in- 
terfering with the salvation of souls if she refused to 
give the foundation for California." 

Sister Mary then goes on with a part of the story 
that we have had before, about Sister Mary Baptist's 
appointment as leader of the little missionary troop. 
" Then her mother came, but she said no — she had let 
her go far enough and could not let her go any fur- 
ther. Reverend Mother prevailed on her, and brought 
Sister Mary Paul, and Sister Mary Gabriel, a nov- 
ice [a bright young girl, Sylvia Brown, belonging 
to a highly connected family of County Limerick] into 
the parlor, as well as the others who were going ; and 
this touched Mrs. Russell, and she gave her consent." 
Sister Mary ends this part of her narrative with the 
remark : ' ' Rev. Mother was like her mother, who 
was a fine business woman." 

It will be best to give continuously the rest of Sis- 
ter Mary's " deposition," though it takes us beyond 



56 MARY BAPTIST RUSSEU, 

the point that we have reached and attributes a sort 
of prophecy to the present writer. 

" After coming out here, I was very lonely, and I 
used to fret a great deal, but Rev. Mother would shake 
her finger at me with a sweet smile. When I would 
look at her working and scrubbing, I would feel 
ashamed of myself, and say, ' She is a fine lady and see 
what she does, so why should I complain ? ' 

"We arrived here on December 8th, and went to 
stay with the Sisters of Charity. At the end of the 
year we made our Renovation retreat, and Rev. 
Mother herself gathered a few sticks and made a sweet 
little crib for ourselves. We were as happy as it was 
possible to be. 

" When we were really poor in the hospital, we did 
not have very many fine beds, and Rev. Mother used 
to sleep in a little place at the head of the stairs. She 
w T aited one day until we were at recreation, and went 
and hauled the hair mattress which she had down- 
stairs, and gave it to a poor man who had only a straw 
bed. She arranged his bed wdth her own mattress. 
I found that she did this, and I told Bridget Kennedy, 
and she went to Rev. Mother's cell, and found apiece 
of carpet stretched on the cot to take the place of the 
mattress. She then got her another mattress, and 
wrote ' Rev. Mother ' in big letters, so that she could 
not give it away again. 

''She was kindness itself in her visitations to the 
sick. One time she heard of a poor family, and when 
she went there she found the poor woman lying in 
bed in consumption. Her husband was away. When 
Rev. Mother saw the distress, she came back, and went 
over to the Home, and took all the dresses, shirts, etc., 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 57 

she could get and also went to the Infirmary drawers 
and took sheets and tunics, etc. She did this so often 
that they had to lock the Infirmary drawers on her. 
They used to tell her she would never make a poor 
man's wife, as she would have him robbed, at which 
she always laughed. On the day I was speaking 
about, she went supplied with what was necessary, 
and when she got there, put on a tin of water to heat, 
washed the poor woman, and got her comfortably set- 
tled in bed. When this was done, she took the little 
ones one by one and put them into the tub of water 
and washed them, and dressed them with new shirts. 
The last little one she had no shirt for, so she took a 
napkin and cut holes in it for sleeves, and fixed it 
around him and wrapped him in a comforter. She 
used to go and visit this family and help them nearly 
ever} 7 day. She loved the poor. There used to be a 
crazy woman, and she used to go to her cell and say, 
1 1 want to get into your bed,' and Mother would get 
up and put her in, not thinking that any one knew it, 
and would stay around her. She loved to make her 
happy even for a couple of minutes. 

" We were always happy and united. It was like a 
heaven upon earth. Of course we suffered a great 
deal after coming here, but Mother would insist on 
doing all the drudgery. She would often stay at 
home and do the hard work, and send M. M. De Sales, 
Sr. M. Bernard, Sr. M. Gabriel and myself to the 
Hospital, from nine in the morning till six in the 
evening. She used to put her apron on, tuck up her 
habit, and do all the cooking, cleaning and scrubbing. 
She was a model of humility. 

" After her visits # to the Asylum, the penitents 



58 MARY BAPTIST RUSSEU, 

would say, ' Didn't Rev. Mother leave peace after 
her? She made us so happy.' She was very fond of 
them. 

" At one time Father Russell was giving the Sisters 
a retreat in one of their foundations, and Sr. Veronica 
was appointed to wait on him. When he heard she 
was from Kinsale, he asked her if she knew Sister 
Mary Baptist. She said, ' Father, I do indeed, and I 
could write a book about her.' She did not know that 
she was speaking to her brother, and she afterwards 
wrote me about it. He then remarked, ' Well, I may 
one day write a book about her.' They idolize her 
memory in Kinsale. After being out here, her appear- 
ance changed a great deal, so that when she went back 
to Kinsale, one of the Sisters asked her, not knowing 
her, ' When will Mother Baptist come to visit us? ' 
She became so dark, they did not know her, and told 
her she had turned into a Yankee. She seemed to 
possess every virtue. She would humble herself to 
ask the opinion of others, and make one feel ashamed. 
She was the same to everyone, and if there was any 
exception, she was more tender to the poor and 
afflicted. When one would go to talk with her, it was 
almost like going to Confession. You would come 
away light-hearted. Whatever she said, you would 
look upon as sacred. I never remember seeing her in 
the least angry. She was servant to the servants, and 
according to God's own heart. She would sometimes 
be displeased with me, but she would come back and 
make it up with me again, showing that she had en- 
tirely forgotten the fault. Oh, I owe my perseverance 
to dear Rev. Mother. She was so patient and kind 
w T ith me. If you committed a, fault, and someone 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 59 

would speak of it to her, she would be careful never 
to mention the name of the person from whom she 
received her information. She was so careful on all 
points of charity, and had a charitable construction to 
put on everyone's actions, at least attributing it to 
ignorance, or saying that there was certainly no bad 
motive in doing it. I could not say enough about her. 
Every one loved her." 



CHAPTER V. 

THE LETTERS OF MOTHER MARY BAPTIST RUSSELL. 

Father Ignatius Grant, S.J. , remarks somewhere 
that of all saints the letter-writing saints are the most 
popular; and Cardinal Newman has said that a man's 
life and character are best known from his letters. 
Exception might be taken to both statements, though 
they are substantially true within certain limitations. 
Engrossed as Mother Baptist was in business of various 
kinds through all the moments of her crowded days, 
she considered it a duty and an excellent exercise of 
zeal and charity to keep up intercourse by letter with 
her kinsfolk and her religious sisters, especially in 
Newry and Kinsale. 

The letters sent home during the early years of the 
Californian mission seem to have disappeared. The 
Sisters were already five years at work in February, 
i860, the earliest date I can find. The young Rever- 
end Mother writes then to her own mother whom she 
addresses to the end in the old childlike fashion as 

" My Dearest Mamma : 

" It is nearly two months since Mr. O'Connor delivered 
your fine collection of letters, also the ' Life of Mezzo- 

60 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 6 1 

fanti' and the pamphlet by dear Charles. l I must 
thank dear Arthur, Margaret, Matthew, etc., etc., through 
you, as I cannot write to themselves. I sent on your 
letters to Columbus by next mail. You must not be 
displeased, as it pleases the poor creatures there so much 
to hear all the particulars. I have not got a reading of 
Uncle Charles' book yet, as it has been borrowed by some 
of the priests. Poor Uncle Charles seems doomed not to 
enjoy the quiet of college life very long. I hear that he 
is surely to be Bishop this time. Mrs. Rose Kelly, whom 
I have often mentioned, was quite interested in dear 
Charles' articles on workhouses. She is a matron of a 
large lunatic asylum about one hundred and fifty miles 
from this in a town called Stockton since the ist of last 
June. She ofcen tells us she will see our people yet, as 
she intends, please God, to visit the old sod once more. 
She has on an average one hundred and sixty female 
lunatics ; and there are fully twice as many men. It is 
quite a remarkable fact that, though the population of 
California is for the greater part Catholic and Irish, there 
is quite a small proportion of either in the as3 7 lum, the 
effect of religioii, of course. 

"We are going on here, thank God, as usual. We 
hope, too, that i860 will surely see our building pretty 
far on. The contract for the brick required was duly 
signed on the 2d of this month. Our good Mother wants 
to signalize all her Feasts by something propitious. 
Sister M. Francis sends you her love and desires me to 
tell you / am very good. I tell her you know that already. 
Dear Sarah is now in her second year; please God, she 
will be professed this time twelve months. I have hardly 
left myself room to send love to all. I would wish to 



1 Probably "The Catholic in the Workhouse," published 
by Richardson of London and Derby, just after the late 
Chief Justice of England had been called to the Bar. 



62 MARY BAPTIST RUSSELL 

begin with yourself, I send you my fondest love, dearest 
mamma, a thousand times, and I hope your love makes 
you pray and pray over and over for me and mine. To 
Arthur, James, Margaret, Anne, Mary and all the little 
ones, also to Aunt Anne, Kate, Elizabeth and all my dear 
uncles my love. 

1 ' I remain, dear Mamma, 3'our affectionate child in Jesus 
Christ. Sister M. B. Russell." 

Mother Baptist alludes in the foregoing to her 
youngest sister as having joined her eldest and being 
now half-way through her noviceship as a Sister of 
Mercy. When the second half thereof was nearly 
completed, she refers to her again in less respectful 
terms. Writing to the same correspondent on the 9th 
of March, 1861, she remarks that letters posted in 
Ireland in January had reached her the day before ; 
and this she considers wonderfully quick travelling for 
the mails. Nowadays they would make the journey 
in quarter of the time. 

" That little rogue, Sister Mary Emmanuel, is to be 
professed on the 8th of next month. Just think of 
her writing but once to us since she entered ! We are 
half inclined not to pray one bit for her unless she 
writes to beg our prayers in the meantime." 

The infrequency of the Newry novice's letters was 
not due to any indifference of her towards her exiled 
sister. At that very time she was longing to share 
her exile. She had perhaps made up her mind as to 
her vocation as early as her elder sisters ; but their 
departure had left her alone with her mother, from 
whom it seemed hard to demand this additional sacri- 
fice. She always intended, however, to go out to San 
Francisco as soon as she could be spared ; and even 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 63 

when Mother Catherine O'Connor, the first Superior 
in Newry, and Sister Mary Aquin persuaded Mrs. 
Russell to let her youngest daughter enter the newly 
founded convent of her native town, Sister Mary Em- 
manuel did so with the intention of going out to 
Mother Baptist when a fitting opportunity should 
offer. " In those days such opportunities [she writes] 
did not often occur ; and. as my time of profession 
drew near and no chance of getting out seemed likely, 
I had to content myself and remain where I was, 
though the wish was ever present to my mind, not so 
much for the affection I always felt for dear Kate as 
because there was no one for whom I have ever felt 
the same reverence and dependence." 

If Mrs. Russell did not send another of her daugh- 
ters to Mother Baptist's aid, she largely assisted more 
than one Irish maiden to make their way for this pur- 
pose to the Golden Gate. At the beginning of 1861 
the new hospital in San Francisco was approaching 
completion ; and it was considered best, in furnishing 
it, to deal directly with the English manufacturers of 
the different articles required — a measure of doubtful 
prudence even in those far-off days when the resources 
of San Francisco were so poor compared with her 
present all-sufficiency. Mary Baptist asked her mother 
to invest in this manner a few supplementary hun- 
dreds which she was able to allot to her dear exile in 
the final settlement of her affairs which she made 
about this time when she felt that her Nunc dimittis 
must be near. She discharged this commission with 
her usual thoroughness, travelling to the various 
English towns where the articles necessary for the 
equipment of a hospital were manufactured, and spar- 



64 MARY BAPTIST RTJSSKIX 

ing no fatigue or expense till all the enormous crates 
and bales had been safely shipped to California about 
the beginning of 1861. To her too great exertions 
may be attributed a stroke of apoplexy which fell upon 
her soon after, and nearly proved fatal. She recovered, 
however, but she never was the same again. This 
was the perfecting grace that closed her energetic and 
most useful life. Her last six years were but a linger- 
ing death. Her patience, unselfishness and self-con- 
trol never forsook her. There was never a murmur or 
complaint — always easily pleased and read} 7 to enjoy a 
visit from one of the Sisters, for it is pleasant to record 
that the good mother who had given away all her 
daughters most cheerfully to the religious state re- 
ceived more care and comfort from them to the last 
than if she had selfishly urged her counter-claims 
when the message came to them, one after the other, 
" The Master is come and calleth thee." (John xvii, 
28.) Mrs. Arthur Russell was allowed, as a special 
benefactress of the Newry Convent of Mercy, to spend 
her last years in a house that formed part of the con- 
vent premises. And so it came to pass that the sacri- 
fice she had made in giving so many of her children 
to God's special service was rewarded by a happy and 
peaceful deathbed surrounded by nuns who loved and 
revered her, and among them two of her own daugh- 
ters, though her death took place at so early an hour 
as half-past three o'clock A. m., of the 29th of August, 
1867. She was in her seventy-sixth year. May she 
rest in peace. 

It is strange that the following note, which reached 
the next day the pretty little town of Newtonbarry, 
where the Faithful Companions of Jesus had just fin- 



PIONEER SrSTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 65 

ished their annual retreat, should have survived so 
long. 

Thursday Morning, Aug. 29, 1867. 
My Dearest Matthew ; 

Dear, dear Mamma has left us without a struggle, like 
a baby sleeping, she went so calmly — with Reverend 
Mother and many of the Sisters praying round her — at 
3:15 o'clock this morning. Since I wrote last, she seemed 
to suffer very little. She was so very patient, thank God 
for His wonderful mercy and love to her all through her 
illness. She had every comfort and consolation. You 
can do more for her now than any of us, and will do it, 
too. Your good priests will remember her also. 

There are many letters to be written, so excuse my 

short one to you. 

Your loving sister, 

Mary Emmanuel. 

Another of the watchers beside that deathbed refers 
back to it in the following letter nearly three months 
later : 

Convent of Mercy, 

Rostreyor, Nov. 13, 1867. 
My Dear Matthew : 

Long have I been wishing to spend half an hour talking 
to you on paper ; so, dear Matthew, this is a selfish grati- 
fication for me. I hope I may give you even a little bit 
of pleasure. I know nothing of you at all, and would not 
be sure you were in Limerick, were it not that Mother 
Francis Bridgeman mentioned to me in a recent letter that 
you had paid her a flying visit during her stay in that far- 
famed city. She thought you looked old. Did she tell 
you Kate is expected over from San Francisco in spring ? 
The letter which states this, is, I believe, to our dear de- 



66 MARY BAPTIST RUSSEU, 

parted mother. I was staying in Newry lately, having 
been a great invalid since I saw yon. I am only now 
recovering and that very slowly. God knows what is best 
for us all. Often I would fain have written to ask your 
renewed prayers for me. I do not wish nor pray to 
be well, but I want to be a cheerful, edifying sufferer ; or I 
should say more correctly, I desire to suffer in the spirit 
my Lord and Spouse wishes me to suffer. I don't know 
when I was so ill, and oh ! how I dreaded losing patience j 
Mamma's example was ever before me. Matthew, such a 
mother as ours was ! What silent, enduring patience ! 
No one would suppose she had any pain, and oh ! if you 
had seen the bleeding, bruised back, and if you knew the 
sleepless, agonizing nights and days she passed ; and her 
constant request was that her children might not know 
what she was enduring lest it should pain them. Her 
daughter and a religious, and so different my spirit ! This 
was harder on me than all. Dearest Matthew, I thank 
God we have you our mediator at Calvary, through the 
Holy Mass. This is now my greatest comfort. Pray very, 
very much for me. You know what I should be ; implore 
this great grace for me. It is so encouraging in pain 
either of mind or body to be assured we have strong ad- 
vocates in our hour of need. I am writing just as I think, 
not waiting to make this a connected epistle. You don't 
mind that. [Then after two pages asking prayers for the 
wants of other people, the holy, unselfish soul went on.] 
This is surely a selfish letter, but such it must be. We 
have nothing strange here except a new curate, and a 
French Sister of Charity over from Liverpool, attending a 
sick gentleman in the village. You may be sure this is a 
nine days' wonder. Dearest Matthew, with gratitude and 
thankfulness to God for having a brother a priest, believe 
me your own loying sister, 

Sister M. Aquin Russeu,. 




MARGARET RUSSELL. 



•'•a 



•■■'- 



■H 




THE GRAVE OF ARTHUR AND MARGARET RUSSELL. 



CHAPTER VI. 

SISTER MARY AQUIN (ELIZABETH RUSSEEL). 

" Like father, like son" is less true than "like 
mother, like daughter." Mother and daughter are 
more closely and constantly united in the tender, im- 
pressionable years of childhood ; and the mother has 
more unceasing opportunity of moulding the disposi- 
tions and manners of her little girl. The striking 
similarity of character in dissimilar spheres of duty, 
which proved Mary Baptist Russell to be her mother's 
daughter, may be pleaded as an excuse for so long a 
digression from the story of the first Californian Sister 
of Mercy ; and we trust that the interest of a very 
attractive personality will excuse a further digression 
that we are about to make in order to link the name of 
her elder sister, the writer of the letter last quoted, 
with two or three bits of literature of which she was 
the inspiration. On the authority of Lady Gilbert 
herself — she was then Rosa Mulholland — we claim for 
Sister Mary Aquin (Elizabeth Russell) the distinction 
of having been the original of the nun who figures in 
one of the most exquisite tales, for which Dickens 
himself chose the name of " Hester's History," and 
which ran through a twelvemonth of his famous 

67 



68 MARY BAPTIST RUSSKU, 

weekly magazine, All the Year Round. Here is the 
way in which the novelist describes a convent parlor 
and her beloved friend and kinswoman, Sister Mary 
Aquin, whom she here transfers from the patronage of 
the Angel of the Schools to that of an earlier Doctor 
of the Church. 

"The room into which Hester was shown had 
brown panelled walls and a brown panelled floor. 
There was a large vase of lilies and roses, a full-length 
statue of Christ blessing the little children, an alms- 
box, with its label ' For the Sick and Dying Poor,' a 
table covered with a plain red cloth, an inkstand bear- 
ing writing materials, a few books. The windows 
were already open, and there was not one speck of dust 
about the place. It shone with cleanliness, it smiled 
with cheerfulness, it gave one Good morning ! out of 
all its corners. By-and-by the handle turned ; there 
was a little rustling as of fresh linen, a little rattling 
as of heavy beads ; the door opened, and the ' Mother ' 
appeared. Here were sweet, tender, pitiful blue eyes, 
and a brow smooth and serene under its spotless little 
band ; no latent fire, no lines to show where frowns 
had been. The face was oval and softly moulded, and 
very winning in its exquisite freshness and purity. 
The mouth was mobile, and, though ever quick with a 
right word, was yet, in its changing expressions, most 
eloquent of much that it left unspoken. The com- 
plexion was so dazzling fair, so daintily warmed with 
its vermilion on the cheeks, no paint nor powder could 
mimic it ; only early rising, tender labors, never-ceas- 
ing and perpetual joy of spirit, could have combined in 
producing it. The quaint black garment, the long, 
floating veil, and narrow gown of serge, were right fit 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 69 

and becoming to the wearer. They laid hold of her 
grace and made their own of it, while she, thinking to 
disguise herself in their sombre setting, wrapped the 
unlovely folds around her, and shone out of them, as 
only the true gem can shine. The shadow that the 
black veil threw round her face made its purity almost 
awful, but made its bloom and simplicity the more en- 
tirely enchanting. Not the satins of a duchess, not 
the jewels of an empress, could have lent half such a 
fitting lustre to this womanly presence of the gentle 
Mother Augustine, of the daughters of St. Vincent, in 
the old Convent of St. Mark." 

There are many still whose memory will recognize 
this as a faithful picture of Sister Mary Aquin. We 
have already mentioned that, before her novitiate in 
Kinsale was completed, she returned to Xewry to 
assist Mother Mary Catherine O'Connor in establishing 
a Convent of Mercy in her dear native town. Her 
profession was one of the first occasions on which the 
people of Newry heard a voice that was to instruct and 
delight them for a score of years — that of the holy 
Dominican, John Pius Leahy, who had just been ap- 
pointed Coadjutor to the venerable Bishop of Dromore, 
Dr. Michael Blake. The old Bishop, on the 14th of 
April, 1856, wrote to Father Patrick O'Neill, who had 
been chiefly instrumental in bringing the Sisters of 
Mercy to Newry. This admirable priest was then 
spending a well-earned holiday in Rome. "I feel 
great pleasure, because I am sure it will give you joy, 
in assuring you that God has been pleased to bless the 
labors you underwent here in founding the Convent of 
Mercy with so many marks of His divine favor and 
approbation as I would have considered in the begin- 



JO MARY BAPTIST RUSSEUv 

ning almost incredible. Miss Russell's profession on 
the Tuesday after Dominica in Albis, and the Right 
Rev. Dr. Leahy's instructions and influence, have 
added powerfully to the zeal and exertions of the Rev. 
Mother Superioress of that community. Within the 
last two or three weeks postulants have been received 
into it, and on this day two postulants have applied to 
me. We lamented, at the commencement, that we 
would want subjects for its duties ; our difficulty now 
is to have cells enough for their reception, and com- 
modious schools, and, above all, a decent and neat, if 
not a fully becoming chapel, for the Sisters and 
inmates." 

The best wishes of the old Bishop for his new con- 
vent have long since been fulfilled. It has meanwhile, 
year by year, done an immense amount of good ; and 
it has in its turn sent out colonies to L,urgan, Rostre- 
vor, Warrenpoint and Bessbrook, the first of which 
has already, out of its abundance, bestowed the same 
grace upon Cookstown. Of these, the branch house at 
Rostrevor was Sister Mary Aquin's peculiar work. 
The beautiful little convent, which is sheltered under 
the holy shadow of the church-spire that rises grandly 
over leafy Rostrevor, was built chiefly through her 
heroic exertions. 

Her usefulness certainly did not end with the break- 
down in her health which was partly due to her 
excessive labors in procuring funds under very great 
difficulties for the completion of the convent at Ros- 
trevor. For many of her last years her work was 
chiefly the exceedingly hard work of giving edification 
by brightness and unselfish cheerfulness during chronic 
ill-health, though she was ingenious also in utilizing 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN .CALIFORNIA. 7 1 

every moment of the enforced leisure of an invalid. 
It was at this time that another picture of her was 
drawn in verse by the same artist w 7 ho has already 
described her in prose : — 

I see a convent gray — 

It standeth above the town ; 
It looketh from the distant way 

Like a monk in his faded gown. 

The town is older and grayer 

That sitteth below its feet ; 
And sin, and pain, and sorrow, and care, 

Are dwelling in every street. 

Dwelling in every street, 

Yet hurried from place to place, 
As the Sisters go with their burden sweet, 

Bread, and comfort and grace. 

In a nook of that convent gray 

She dwelleth, my tender Saint ; 
Sweeter her face than I can say, 

Nobler than word can paint. 

Her wimple is white as milk, 

Her robe is coarse and spare ; 
And never a lady in gems and silk 

Looked half so grand and fair. 

Her mind is a river of light, 

Her heart is a well of love ; 
But none may look on her soul so white 

Save only the Lord above. 

That soul's most rapid flame — 

The soul of my tender Saint — 
It wasteth sore her beautiful frame, 

And maketh her body faint. 



72 MARY BAPTIST RUSS^U. 

She stayeth her eager feet, 

And goeth not oft to the town ; 

But up in her window, lone and sweet, 
She sitteth, and gazeth down. 

O crowded, sad gray walls, 
O people who dwell within, 

Little ye know of the tear that falls 
Da}^ by day for your sin ! 

Her town is her nested dove — 
She huggeth it close and dear ; 

She wrappeth it round with motherly love, 
She watch eth with motherly fear. 

They turn, the godless men, 

They turn their steps and they come ; 
They know not why, but they come again, 
As this were their childhood's home. 

They turn with willing feet, 

The foolish wife and maid ; 
They have no fear of the lips so sweet, 

That preach, but never upbraid. 

They come, with blushing face ; 

And they come, with tearful eye ; 
And one hath sorrow, and one disgrace, 

To whisper when none are by. 

And kneeling close to her knee, 
They catch her fire, I ween ; 

And, burning strangely and holily, 
Are not what they have been. 

She hath them all in her heart, 

It is deep, and strong, and broad — 

And well I know with what loving art 
She talketh of them to God. 




REV. PATRICK O NEILL, P.P., ROSTREVOR 




SIR JOHN AND LADY GILBERT. 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 73 

These beautiful lines are called ft My Saint." One 
day that the young poet was walking with her beloved 
Saint in the tiny garden that lies between the church 
and the convent of Rostrevor, the nun's thin, white 
fingers plucked a rose and gave it to its namesake. 
That evening two or three lines were scribbled with a 
pencil on a scrap of paper, without any thought of 
their being shown to any one, even to the giver of the 
rose ; yet here they are after so many years : 

God bless the dews that fed, the winds that rocked thee, 

Wee rose divine ! 
God bless the holy hands that kindly plucked thee, 

To press in mine. 
God love the loving heart whose love is in thee 

Laid up for me, 
And may her sweet and sacred counsels win me 

Eternity ! 

After linking true poetr}' with the saintly and gentle 
memory of Sister Mary Aquin, there is bathos in 
adding that she was before in a homelier poet's mind 
when he exclaimed : 

11 May God be blessed, with all my soul I cry, 

For giving elder sisters ! Who as they 
Can soothe and chide us, guard and purify, 

Discreetly scold, and then good-humored play, 
Mother and sister both, so grave and yet so gay? ' ! 

And she also was one of 

" — those fair angels, saintly, wise, light-hearted, 

Whose smile made pure the very air I breathed, 
And who at parting — for we all have parted — 

Sweet, sanctifying memories bequeathed. " 1 



1 See the opening poem of " Vespers and Compline : a 
Soggarth's Sacred Verses." 



74 MARY BAPTIST RUSSELL 

But we have lingered too long with the sweet spirit 
of Mother Baptist's oldest sister. Her prolixitas 
mortis came to an end, and the welcome Angel of 
Death summoned her at last on the ist of August 
1876, in the forty-ninth year of her age. Her happy 
death occurred in the branch convent she had worked 
hard to establish ; and this is the reason why Rostre- 
vor is not mentioned gratefully with Newry, Warren- 
point and Killowen in this fragment of one of the last 
letters that she ever wrote : 

" I still continue to get pigeons, wild-fowl, grapes, 
jellies, etc., from kind friends in Newry and Warren- 
point ; and sundry presents of fresh eggs, butter, 
apples and flowers from the kind people in Killowen. 
1 mention this to show the goodness of the people of 
what is called this wicked world. Somehow we are 
better to every one than we are to God ; and still He 
is not jealous, but seems to inspire an increase of 
charitable acts to each other, passing over Himself, 
being satisfied that what we do to the least of His 
brethren, we do unto Him." 

The letter last quoted spoke of the visit that Mother 
Baptist was then expected to pay to her native land. 
A correspondent from the Convent of Mercy, Clona- 
kilty, had exclaimed : " What a happiness it will be 
for Sisters M. Aquin and Emmanuel to see Mother M. 
Baptist again ! ' ' But one of these two was not to see 
her again on earth. 



CHAPTER VII. 

IN CHARGE OF THE SMALLPOX HOSPITAL. 

When Mother Baptist had completed the long term 
of office 1 allowed to a Foundress, in May, 1867, 
she ceased to be Superioress and became Assistant 
to the new Reverend Mother, Mary Gabriel Brown ; 
but after the shortest interval allowable, namely three 
years, the burden of " superiority" was laid upon her 
once more, as it was again and again in precisely simi- 
lar circumstances until the end. 

This first break was considered a proper time for 
the execution of a project which seemed to many of 
the Community useful and even necessary — namely, 
that Mother Baptist should visit Europe and Ireland 
for the purpose of getting more suitable postulants, 
who were by no means numerous in this newest of the 
United States. But the Bishop of San Francisco, Dr. 
Alemany, held very strict and very wise views as to 
the general inexpediency of such journeys, and the 
idea was abandoned. Mother Baptist was called, as 



1 "Six years by appointment and then the two triennials 
allowed by the Constitution," says the author of Leaves from 
the Annals of the Sisters of Mercy, who adds : "To the great 
grief of her subjects she would not accept a dispensation from 
Rome, which they unanimously desired." 

75 



76 MARY BAPTIST RUSSKLL 

we have already said, on the first opportunity to fill 
again a double term of office, from 1870 to J 876; and, 
when in the latter year she was again free from those 
responsibilities, the project of a pilgrimage to Europe 
was revived, but it was not carried out until nearly 
two years later. 

Before, however, we accompany Mother Baptist on 
her one visit to the Old Country, we must find room 
for some particulars belonging to an earlier date. In 
the summer of 1868 there was a terrible outbreak of 
smallpox in San Francisco. The Sisters of Mercy 
offered to take charge of the patients in the Smallpox 
Hospital, and the offer was eagerly accepted. One of 
the Protestant newspapers paid at the time this tribute 
to the devoted services of the Sisters: — "It was 
almost with a feeling of shame for Protestantism that 
we saw, the other day, when the continual complaints 
of mal-administration and neglect of patients at the 
Variola Hospital in this city seemed to be without 
remedy, none of our religious denominations save the 
Catholic Church had any organization which could 
furnish intelligent help — competent, intelligent, kind, 
female nurses to enter that home of misery and take 
charge of its ministrations to the crowd of suffering 
humanity it contains. Those devoted Sisters of Mercy 
willingly presented themselves and entered on a mis- 
sion of charity from which all others shrink in dismay 
and affright. That their presence there will have a 
beneficial effect none can doubt. Already the good 
results of their presence are apparent. Their fearless, 
self sacrificing love is an honor to their Church and 
to their Order. ' ' 

This was during the three years' interval after 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 77 

Mother Baptist's first long term of office as Mother 
Superior ; and she took advantage of her private sta- 
tion to claim the post of danger in the Smallpox 
Hospital. It was there that she wrote the following 
letter to the Rev. Patrick O'Neill, parish priest of 
Rostrevor, one of the holiest and most zealous priests 
that have ever sanctified the Church of Ireland. He 
was a true and devoted friend of the Sisters of Mercy 
whom he was mainly instrumental in establishing in 
Newry and afterwards in Rostrevor. The half par- 
ishes that Mother Baptist speaks of were Killbroney 
and Killowen : — 

Smallpox Hospital, 
San Francisco, Cal., March 27, 1869. 

Dear Rev. Father : — As Sister Mary Aquin is no 
longer in Rostrevor and as I am not sure of the name of 
any of the Sisters, I will take the liberty of introducing 
to you my very dear friends, Mr. and Mrs. Kelly and their 
party, and beg you to introduce them to the inmates of 
your sweet little Convent. 

They are travelling for the purpose of seeing the beau- 
ties of their native land, and, in my opinion, in no place 
could so many lovely views be found in so small a com- 
pass as in the vicinity of Rostrevor. 

You will be glad to know that this Hospital has given 
us many opportunities for promoting the salvation of 
souls. I must tell you of one that was undoubtedly saved 
almost miraculously yesterday. The evening before, 
about seven o'clock, a carriage brought to this door a 
half distracted father and mother with their only son, 
aged six years, with the prevailing disorder in a virulent 
form. The rules of the Hospital require a special permit 
from the head officer of the Board to enable any friends 
to remain with the sick, so the poor mother had to leave 



78 MARY BAPTIST RUSSELL 

the child with us and go back to the city for this docu- 
ment. We soon saw the child was dying, and we thought 
he might not live through the night ; and, knowing the 
negligence and want of faith of so many in this country, 
we began to fear it had never been baptized, and, not 
having in the hurry even ascertained the name or nation- 
ality of the parents, we had no means of judging. So at 
nine o'clock p. m., I gave it conditional baptism, and 
most providential it was I did so, as the mother returned 
soon after and turned out to be a most bigoted Baptist, 
but one that saw no use in baptizing a child, and, as 
she never left him one instant till he expired, we 
should have had no chance of pouring the regenerating 
waters on his head, had we deferred it one half hour . This 
reminds me of a visit we paid once, ostensibly to comfort 
the mother, but in reality to baptize the child who was on 
the point of death. Sister Mary Francis, my companion, 
was provided with a small bottle of water, and, by way of 
having better light to look at the little one, took him in 
her arms to the window, while I in the warmth of my 
sympathy pressed the mother's hands. Soon the little 
one was laid in its crib,' the child of God, and very soon 
after it was, I trust, in the enjoyment of His presence. 
It is terrible to reflect on the hundreds calling themselves 
Christians who have never been baptized, that are met 
with in this country. I do not know the exact number, 
but think it must now be over a hundred who have 
received that Sacrament during this epidemic in this one 
hospital. The Catholics afflicted have been very few 
indeed, and, as a general thing, very fine men. Often 
remarks have been made on their edifying deaths by per- 
sons of other denominations who were present. Soon 
after Dr. Miller's appointment I was assisting a fine 
young Irishman, "James Fennell, " in his last moments ; 
he was choking, and in as great agony as any mortal ever 
suffered, his face purple and his big frame convulsed. I 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 79 

thought him long speechless when the poor fellow, mak- 
ing a great effort, pronounced distinctly the holy names 
Jesus } Mary and Joseph . The doctor and nurse, both Prot- 
estants, were evidently much impressed but turned away 
and left me alone, much to my relief. I found afterwards 
that Sister M. Borgia, one of my companions, had ex- 
plained to him the indulgence granted for repeating those 
holy names when dying. A German Lutheran said tome 
afterwards, " I see you Catholics do more for your dying 
than we do. " And true for him, as the poor Protestants 
are left alone to breathe out their last, and the instant 
they have ceased to breathe the sheet is drawn over their 
faces and off they are carried to the " dead house. " We 
get too much gratitude, I fear, from the survivors. Still, 
as it is not that we seek, I trust it will not lessen our 
merit. I will enclose an article in yesterday's Pacific, a 
religious journal of the Protestant stamp. You will please 
let James read it, as it may interest him, and I have not a 
second copy, and neither have I now time to write to him. 
I have come to the end of my paper without expressing a 
hope that you are enjoying tolerable health, and that 3'our 
flock in both the half parishes are your comfort here, 
and that they w T ill be your glory hereajter. The Sister I 
have mentioned above is a convert, and loses no opportu- 
nity of begging prayers for the conversion of her aged 
father, her brother, and two sisters. Please remember 
them sometimes at Mass, and I will feel very grateful ; 
and pray for me sometimes also. 

Begging your blessing, I remain, dear Rev. Father, 
Ever most respectfully in Jesus Christ, 
Your obedient, humble servant, 

Sister Mary B .Russell, 

Sister oj Mercy. 

One of Mother Baptist's helpers in this hard task 
was Sister Mary Francis Benson, who took advantage 



80 MARY BAPTIST RUSSELL 

of a bad cold to write a long letter home to the Kin- 
sale Convent of Mercy. As (unlike the preceding 
letter) it is already in type in the Leaves from the 
Annals of the Sisters of Mercy, we shall quote only the 
opening paragraph : 

" This is truly a horrible disease, so loathsome, so 
disgusting, so pitiable. Twice the number of patients 
with any other disease would not require the care and 
attendance that those afflicted with smallpox required. 
Not one spot from the crown of the head to the sole 
of the foot sound, the e}^es of the greater number 
closed, and pus running from them down the cheeks ; 
their throats so sore that to take a drink almost 
chokes them ; the tongue sometimes so swollen that 
not a drop can pass down ; the hands so sore that they 
are helpless and the odor so terrible that they them- 
selves cry out : 4 O Sister, I cannot stand the smell.' 
The doctors say it is an unusually malignant type. It 
is strange that few Irish take it. The majority of the 
sufferers are Germans, the next in number native 
Americans, with a mixture of Danes, Prussians, 
French, Spaniards, Italians and Portuguese." 

One of the patients wdio recovered publishes this 
' ' outpouring of a grateful heart, ' ' in The Morniyig 
Call, one of the San Francisco newspapers : 

''What shall I say to express my sentiments re- 
garding those ladies so heroic, those angels of mercy ? 

Oh, what work they did for their suffering fellow- 
creatures ! I shall begin with the youngest, a noble 
specimen of God's work. There she might be seen 
from 6 A. m. till a late hour at night, going through the 
wards, carrying a tray with medicine, beef-tea, wine, 
egg-nog, always with the kind look and benevolent 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 8 1 

smile that did more good to our hearts than anything 
the doctor could do for' our health. May heaven's 
blessings descend on that soul ! The next, a Spanish 
lady, whose kind interest in the poor sufferers was 
manifested by her untiring attention, going her 
rounds, morning, noon and night, with a pot of oil in 
one of her blessed hands, and a little brush in the 
other, and well may we thank her if there's a bit of 
skin left on our poor faces. The third, an old lady — 
a real lady in every sense of the word. Here words 
fail to describe her goodness and kindness to all and 
every one, no matter who they were. Oh mothers, 
whose sons died in that hospital, if you could see that 
blessed lady kneeling by the bedside of your darlings, 
as I have seen her, with uplifted eyes and hands, 
wafting the soul to heaven with beautiful prayers ! 
How often did the tears rise up in my man's heart at 
the blessed actions I have seen her perform for the 
loathsome bodies of the poor sufferers ! 

" But these works were done for God, not for the 
praise of an} T one. I could tell a great many more 
divine works of these holy ladies which made the pest- 
house a place of happiness, but another time. I hear 
that most worthy lady, the Rev. Mother of St. Mary's, 
is now at the pest-house in place of one of the blessed 
souls that I know. May God protect them all — they 
are real Sisters of Mercy and mothers of the af- 
flicted ! " 

Mother Baptist was not yet ten years in California 
when a letter was written, not by her or to her but 
about her, which has chanced to flutter back to the 
writer of it thirty-five years after its date. The house- 
hold to which it was addressed contained two sisters 



82 MARY BAPTIST RUSSEU. 

who bore the names of the two sisters of Lazarus. 
Mary and Martha are often alluded to as being both 
represented in the vocation of the Sister of Mercy. 
Thus Dr. Patrick Murray of Maynooth, in the best 
lines he ever wrote and perhaps the best that the Sis- 
ter of Mercy has ever inspired, makes the Sisters say of 
themselves : 

" Martha's work and Mary's part 
Our endless portion still." 

An irrelevant sentence is included in the beginning 
of the quotation for the sake of an unpublished literary 
appreciation which reminds me of a passage in 
Ruskin's " Stones of Venice." 1 " If I could 
only read English and had to choose, for a library 
narrowed by poverty, between Cary's Dante and our 
own original Milton, I should choose Cary without an 
instant's pause." 

" The ' natural man ' would like to chat with Dun- 
leer much oftener, for instance, every other day. But 
that would never do, as Jeffrey said of Wordsworth's 
Excursion — which Aubrey de Vere informed me in con- 
fidence was the greatest work of this century except 
Cary's translation of Dante. 

' - Certain Californian dispatches passed through my 
hands last week. The instructions were that they 
should reach Dunleer via Arthur and Margaret. 
Have they reached you yet? Kate is a grand creature. 
The Martha and the Mary elements (nothing personal, 
I allude not to John's sisters but L,azarus's — have you 
brought out that possessive s with sufficient distinct- 






1 Vol. II., page 262 of the new edition. 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 83 

ness ? Try it again). Well, to return to Bethania, 
(Dr. Johnson never indulged in parenthesis but /do), 
the Martha and Mary elements are mingled in Kate in 
immense quantities and in most harmonious propor- 
tions. She has chosen the better part, but at the same 
time she manages to have the tea-table prett}^ comfort- 
able. That was always her way, and it is not a bad 
way. It will seem past belief, but to hear her talk 
with such quiet faith and charity of offering up Holy 
Communion now and then for poor Father McEvoy, 
wdiom we at home have forgotten years ago — that and 
other simple touches in Kate's letter almost betra} T ed 
me into that twinge of the nose, moistening of the 
eyes, and puckering of the mouth, which, with the 
assistance of a cambric pocket-handkerchief, are 
knowm in fashionable society under the name of weep- 
ing." 

At last in the } T ear 1878 Mother Baptist was allowed 
to pay her one visit to Europe, as we have already said, 
for the purpose chiefly of procuring a supply of suit- 
able novices. After landing at Queenstown she and 
her companion, Sister Mary Columba, proceeded at 
once to her dear old Alma Mater, St. Joseph's Con- 
vent, Kinsale, where they received the heartiest wel- 
come. Sister Columba did not say like Cardinal Wol- 
sey, "I have come to lay my bones among you ; " 
but so it w T as to be. After accompanying Mother Bap- 
tist to several houses of the Order, she returned to Kin- 
sale with the express purpose of performing there the 
last great act of dying. How she performed it we are 
parti} 7 " told in a letter of Mother Baptist to her half- 
brother, Judge Hamill. 



84 MARY BAPTIST RUSSELL 

Convent of Our Lady of Mercy, 

Kinsale, April 20, '79. 
My Dearest Arthur : 

You will all be pained to hear I have lost my dear Sis- 
ter Mary Colutnba. She died at four o'clock yesterday 
morning and I am now just expecting her two brothers, 
brother-in law and her sister ; and I assure you I feel no 
little embarrassment meeting them, for they feel dear 
Sister's death very deeply. You know already she spent 
ten days in Tipperary w^here nothing could exceed the 
tender care she received. I left there and paid a hurried 
visit to Thurles and Limerick. While in the latter place 
she got Sister M. Joseph Gartlan to write to hasten my 
return, saying she w T anted to reach Kinsale before all her 
strength was gone. This was her only desire, for she 
looked on this as next to home, and whenever particularly 
ill, expressed the hope that, if she were going to die, it 
might be here. Still neither of us really imagined she 
was in danger. We rested two days in Cork to break the 
journey, and at last reached Kinsale, two weeks ago to- 
morrow, just about the time we shall be laying her in the 
grave. On Faster Eve she w T as so ill we gave her up, and 
on the following Monday she received the last Sacraments. 
I wrote to inform her brother of our fears, but being from 
home, he did not receive my letter till Tuesday evening. 
Next day he was here for several hours and found her so 
much better apparently than he expected that he went off 
quite relieved. On Friday I saw her end was approach- 
ing, and so wrote to him again, and he had my letter in 
time to prepare him for the telegram announcing her 
death. About half past four on Friday she missed me, (I 
had gone to dinner) and sent for me, and, on my coming 
in, she embraced me so lovingly, and said : " Don't leave 
me any more, Mother. You won 't have me long now, the 
great struggle with death is beginning ; pray forme, pray 
for me, and get prayers for me. You won't fret, Mother ; 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 85 

you know God's will is best ; I am not sorry to die, God's 
will be done. Poor Michael and trie girls — God help them 
and He will. " This was about all she said, except to ask 
for Reverend Mother, and, when she came, she begged for 
prayers and prayers ; and, when Mother was saying a few 
kind words, she said so earnestly, " O, don't mind me but 
pray." I tell }'ou all this to secure your prayers and 
those of dear Mary, Arthur, Alice, Emily and dear old 
Kitty. I would be so glad and so grateful if you would 
all go to Holy Communion, and offer it for her soul on the 
third Sunday after Easter, the Patronage of St. Joseph. 

During the eight or ten hours preceding her death, 
Sister could not speak, and, as far as we could see, was 
not even conscious, at least could make no sign of know- 
ing what was said around, though she may have heard it 
all the time ; we were saying to each other it ought to be 
a lesson to us all, to do all we can for our souls before 
death comes ; for too often the struggle is such as to 
render it impossible to do much at that awful hour. Well, 
dear Arthur, all this may not be very interesting to you, 
but it occupies my mind at present, and I could speak of 
nothing else. Now that I am no longer obliged to calcu- 
late when my sister would be strong enough for the jour- 
ney, I believe I may say- pretty determinedly that we 
shall sail, please God, on the 30th, and I am arranging to 
get a young Sister to bear me company, though I might 
go with one of my "recruits " by letting her enter here, 
even one week before our departure, but I think it is bet- 
ter to get one who has been some time in a convent. 
I will go now overland, as the chief reason for preferring 
the long sea-vo}~age was that it agreed better with Sister 
Columba. I hope, therefore, to reach San Francisco about 
the 24th of May. I will write to some one and beg who- 
ever it may be to inform the rest of my save arrival, as I 
know you will all be anxious. I enclose an Agnus Dei 
and marker for each of you with my fondest love. You 



86 MARY BAPTIST RUSSELL 

always have my prayers and deep affection, and if I never 
saw Mary, Alice, Emily and Arthur John, for your sake 
they would have the same, but I both know and love 
them, though I did not see very much of them ; and I 
hope dear Arthur John will get really strong and have 
everything that the fondest heart could desire. Give each 
my love most affectionately. 

Ever, dear Arthur, Your affectionate sister, 

Mary B. Russell, 

Sister of Mercy. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

BACK TO. THE GOLDEX GATE. 

Before accompanying Mother Baptist back to the 
distant scene of her life work, we shall venture to note 
one quaint little indication of the impression she made 
during her home tour. Among the convents that she 
visited was the spacious and most efficient convent of 
her Order at Dundalk, where her aunt is still a Sister 
of Mercy, the sole survivor of her generation. One of 
the persons who called upon her during her stay at St. 
Malachy's was the excellent local physician, the late 
Dr. John Gartlan, a relative and lifelong friend of her 
kinsfolk, who had come south from Killough and 
made that prosperous town their home. This warm- 
hearted and clever man was a devoted admirer of the 
sitting member for the borough, the last that it was 
ever to return to Parliament before being disfranchised 
as below the new limit of population. This M. P. was 
Mother Baptist's brother, then Charles Russell, Q. C, 
and the doctor's high esteem for him lends energy to 
this expression of his opinion of our Irish-American 
nun :' ' ' She is as much above that London chap as I 
am above my Johnnie," namely, his old coachman, for 
whose intellectual powers he had no great respect, 
especially in comparison with his own. 

87 



88 MARY BAPTIST RUSSELL 

Sister Mary Columba having " gone home " by a 
shorter route, Mother Baptist was left free to hasten 
her return to California. Members of a family are 
counselled to keep up certain social formalities as a 
help to the maintenance of charity, and in religious 
families such observances cannot be overlooked. The 
Sisters at Kinsale did better than that Lord Mayor 
who, at a farewell banquet given to the British Asso- 
ciation of Science, said : "A week ago I welcomed 
you to this ancient city with a cead mile faile, and now 
I take leave of you with the same idiomatic ex- 
pression." A hundred thousand welcomes certainly 
greeted Mother Baptist's arrival, but not her de- 
parture. In their parting address the Kinsale Sisters 
say, after many loving words : "You have during 
your too brief stay with us endeared yourself still 
more to your loving sisters in your old convent home. 
Your visit, beloved Mother, has been indeed a memo- 
rable one for you and for us. The saving impress of 
the Cross, the pledge of our dear Lord's special love 
has marked it, and since He has been pleased to take 
your beloved child and companion to Himself, may 
we not hope that she will join us in interceding for 
her cherished and devoted Mother ? Her grave will 
form another link to bind us still more closely to our 
Sisters in the far West, and, when breathing a prayer 
for the dear departed, they will not be forgotten. And 
you, beloved Mother, will ever be remembered by us 
all where remembrance is best — at the foot of the 
altar. There we shall ask the Divine Prisoner of Love 
to bless and reward you ; and during our visits to 
Him, especially while you and your little band are on 
the wide ocean, we shall fervently beseech Him to 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 89 

guide and protect you and bring you safe to the loving 
ones who anxiously await your return." 

To these affectionate words were added what an old 
writer calls "the mellifluous meeters of poesie," but 
the farewell song is not as quotable as the song of 
welcome that greeted Mother Baptist at the other end 
of her second .and last journey from the Old Head of 
Kinsale to San Francisco and the Golden Gate. Space 
allows us to give only the opening lines of this long 
and beautiful poem. 

The rapture of this meeting 

No parting fears dispel ; 
The gladness of our greeting 

No words may fitly tell ; 
And in our hearts no other, 

No sweeter thought may reign 
Than this : — " Our dearest Mother 

Is with us once again ! ' ' 
The long suspense is over, 

The pain of waiting past — 
Our loved and loving rover 

Is safely here at last. 
Our heavenward-wafted pleading 

Hath ever followed thee 
When thou, dear one, wert speeding 

Across the crested sea. 
We bade Love bind the ocean 

With fetters of His will 
And calm its wild commotion 

With tender " Peace be still ! " 
And to our fond petition 

He sent his answer sweet, 
And safely on their mission 

He led thy pilgrim feet, 



90 MARY BAPTIST RUSSEUv 

Until they trod serenely 

Their own dear native Isle, 
Whose valle} T s, glist'ning greenly, 

Returned thy greeting smile. 

Between the prose and the poetical addresses just 
quoted, Mother Baptist conducted her band of recruits 
over ocean and continent, and no doubt drilled them 
quietly on the way. They were about twice as 
numerous as the original missionary band, in which 
she was leader, too ; and an additional postulant 
joined them en route, to whom was assigned the patron 
of the deceased Sister Columba and who was destined 
to be Mother Baptist's immediate successor in the 
office of Superior. The younger nun gives this 
account of their meeting and of their first journey 
together. " On Sunday, May 18, 1879, I first saw 
Mother Baptist Russell. Her first greeting was ' Oh, 
I know you.' She had seen tw r o sisters of mine wdio 
were Sisters of Mercy in Tralee, and recognized me 
from them. She won my heart at once, inspiring an 
affection that lasted for the twenty happy years that I 
spent under her. 

4 ' This meeting was in Omaha, on her way back 
from Ireland, where my sisters had almost accidentally 
brought me into communication with her. The next 
day at noon I left Omaha with Mother Baptist and 
her companions. Her kindness and thoughtfulness 
in the cars were extreme — alw r ays thinking of others 
before herself, waiting on them, procuring little com- 
forts for them. We did not feel the almost five days' 
travel. The dear Mother beguiled the time with 
incidents of her early life in California, or of her recent 
visit to Ireland and England. Our party had a 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 9 1 

drawing-room car all to itself, and Reverend Mother 
asked each of us (eleven in all) to tell a story, to sing, 
or recite. While crossing the Rockies the train 
moves very slowly. We were seated around Mother 
Baptist, asking for our names in religion. I asked 
for Patrick, but she said, ' I am sorry 3 t ou cannot have 
that as we have a Sister Patricia already, and a black 
novice, Sister Mary Patrick.' One of our companions 
looked frightened, saying she did not know they had 
negroes in the convent in San Francisco. Oh, how 
the dear Mother enjoyed this and spoke of it during 
the rest of the trip. Of course the phrase black 
novice refers to the change of black veil for white veil 
after Profession. When I addressed her as Reverend 
Mother she said, 'I am not Reverend Mother,' but 
added with a sweet smile that I should think would 
win any heart, k but have a very good chance of being 
such on my return.' As a fact she was in office ever}' 
time that she could according to rule since 1855. I 
thought her so wonderful to be able so say from mem- 
ory the Iyitan}' of the Saints, and the long Litany for 
the dead, and the one for a happy death with all the 
prayers attached to them: 1 she used to say them at 
dusk every evening. On Friday, May 23,w r e reached 
our destination to the great joy of all. Our dear 
Mother was delighted to be home again. So here I 
am ever since and every day of my life I thank God 
for having been allowed to associate with Mother 
Baptist so long and to have known her so intimately. ' ' 



1 In this she took after her mother who had off by heart the 
Rosary of Jesus, the Jesus Psalter and other long prayers that 
have now gone out of fashion. 



92 MARY BAPTIST RUSSELL 

Mother Baptist's first letter after her return was be- 
gun on "July 2, 1879," but not finished till the 19th. 
' ' You know from others that I am safe at home since 
the 23d of May. Next morning at 10 o'clock I got 
the keys of the house" — something like being ap- 
pointed Vicar Capitular during the interregnum before 
the election of a new Superior — "and the following 
Thursday I was made Boss. So you see I was just in 
time." She ends a well-filled letter with " a thousand 
loves to each dear Sister in all the houses " — namely 
in Newry Convent of Mercy and its branches. 

Mother Baptist thus after her European trip settled 
down quietly to another long term of office. All tes- 
timonies tend to show that she had altogether excep- 
tional gifts for wise, gentle and firm administration 
and government ; a wonderfully effective combination 
of the suaviter in modo with the fortiter in re. One of 
her most striking characteristics as a Superior was her 
calmness, her peace, her self-possession, even in the 
most untoward circumstances. Part of her secret she 
reveals in the counsel given to a Sister whom she had 
placed in charge of a branch house and who was evi- 
dently tried a good deal by one of her subjects : — 

" Don't on any account let her shortcomings or any- 
thing of that kind bother or disturb you in the least, like 
a good child. God leaves each one of us our free will, 
and we are accountable for ourselves. See how even 
the immediate presence and personal intercourse with 
our Lord did not keep the unhappy Judas right. So 
do what you can, but keep your mind not alone peace- 
ful but joyous, and the more jo}^ous the better for 
yourself and all." 

She ends this letter with the following very com- 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 93 

monplace advice : ' ( See that all the Sisters have 
heavy, good shoes, and everything necessary to keep 
them warm and dry, and keep a good fire. Call for a 
little music occasionally, or play yourself." 

After the date that we have reached in her story, 
Mother Baptist was never again to see Ireland or any 
of her dear kinsfolk except the elder of her brothers. 
On the 14th of August, 1883, Mr. Charles Russell 
started from Liverpool to pay his first visit to America. 
His travelling companions were Lord Coleridge, whom 
he was to succeed as Chief Justice of England, Mr. 
Justice Hannen, before whom he was to defend Par- 
nell, then the leader of the Irish people, Mr. Patrick 
Martin, Q. C, M. P. for Kilkenny, and Mr. James 
Bryce, M. P., whose visit to the States led to the 
composition of an important work, " Impressions of 
America." Another of the party, the one with whom 
we are now concerned, also took notes of what he saw, 
but only for the gratification of his family at home. 
It was certainly characteristic that amidst all the 
fatigue of travelling these pencilled notes went un- 
failingly week b}~ week across the Atlantic. 

None of these were read at home with keener 
interest than the pages relating to Mother Baptist, 
when her brother, leaving Lord Coleridge and his 
other travelling companions in the .Eastern States, 
made his way to California and the Queen of the 
West. Without venturing to ask permission we tran- 
scribe at this point a few passages from the diary just 
as it was hastnV jotted down in pencil at the time. 
San Francisco was not reached b} r rail over the 
Rockies, as in Mother Baptist's second journey to it, 
but by steamer, as in her first. Not now, however, 



94 MARY BAPTIST RUSSKIX 

from Panama in the south, but from the north, by 
Vancouver and the Pacific railroad across Canada. 

" As we got farther south, the outlines of the shore 
were bolder, the bluffs higher and occasionally very 
fine, reminding me greatly of Ireland, say the coast of 
Antrim, but nothing, I think, like so fine as the 
Antrim coast. 

"As we were finishing dinner, our courteous Cap- 
tain, rising from the table, said, ' Gentlemen, I hope 
you will come on deck in a few minutes, for we shall 
soon be passing through the Golden Gate. ' 

' ' Presently up we went. We were approaching the 
entrance to this the finest harbor I ever saw. On each 
side were light- houses and also strong fortifications for 
the defense of the port ; and a little further to the 
south was a great rock known as Seal Rock on which 
literally thousands of seals hourly and daily disport 
themselves. 

"On, on we go, and, now fairly through the en- 
trance, we seethe straggling lights of this the greatest 
City of the South. But the Golden Gate — where is 
it? Why so called? I look eagerly forward, but all 
I see in the dull light of the rapidly closing day is a 
murky, smoky atmosphere, such as one sees in the 
busy towns of Lancashire. Why the Golden Gate ? 
In my perplexity I turn back to the west which we are 
leaving, and I need no further explanation. The reve- 
lation is made to me. The sun has gone down but left 
the traces of his bright golden glory behind him, and 
there between the two headlands which form the pillars 
(themselves gilt by the brightness all around them) we 
see only one blaze of rich golden light from side to 
side. It is well called the Golden Gate. A turn in 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 95 

our course presently shuts out this brightness from 
our view, and we discern in the dull light a number of 
vessels anchored in what seems and is in fact an 
immense anchorage ground. We thread our way 
cautiously amongst them, and, finally landed at Broad- 
way wharf, we are taken possession of by the employes 
of the Palace Hotel, San Francisco, and in its hospi- 
table portals we speedily find ourselves. I will by- 
and-by tell you what San Francisco is like. 

"Tuesday, September 18, 1883. 

" My impressions of yesterday evening of the beauty of 
this place were quite confirmed this morning. We arrived 
at the Palace Hotel and found it all ablaze and a band 
pla}dng in the atrium or courtyard which was crowded. 

" Our rooms had been engaged and were the best in the 
house — on the sixth story ! The} T were really very fine, 
large, lofty, with bathroom and dressing-room to each — 
in fact, very complete suites of rooms. In the morning 
we found we had a distant view of the Bay and across to 
Goat Island over the intervening city. 

"'Frisco is certainly beautifully situated, and beauti- 
fully laid out. Sheltered from the West by the southern 
arm of the Bay, it rests upon a succession of hills — many 
of them very steep — which seem to run almost in regular 
parallel lines. 

"Though much smaller in population than Chicago, it 
is a much more taking city. There is also a great appear- 
ance of business activity. Altogether, after New- York, it 
is the finest city I have seen here. 

1 ' The system of tramcars is the most perfect I have 
seen. Even the steepest hills are charged by steam trams 
worked on the endless chain principle ; and 3TH1 can travel 
from one end of the city to the other for five cents. This 
is the only cheap thing, this tramcar travelling, which I 
have yet come across in the United States. 



96 MARY BAPTIST RUSSELL 

"I went early to St. Mary's Hospital, situated on the 
top of Rincon Hill. I was being shown into a parlor 
when Kate approached — looking on the whole very well 
and strong, and exactly as she looked when in Great 
Britain four years ago —not looking a day older. 

' ' The Sisters of Mercy were not the first religious 
sisterhood in 'Frisco, bnt they have since their arrival, 
about the year 1854, made marked progress. Outside the 
convent and outside the Catholic community the noble 
work they have done is gratefully acknowledged. 

''On Rincon Hill they have a large hospital, a work 
school and a home for aged women. 

' ' They have altogether five branches in 'Frisco and in 
Sacramento, and have in charge several schools. They 
receive no aid from the State funds, and no compensation 
for the important teaching services which the} r render. 
Neither do any other of the Catholic schools. In this 
important particular Catholic schools are much better off 
in England. 

' ' Kate inquired very anxiously about everybody at 
home and I gave her the fullest particulars I could. She 
complains that, although they have been promised to her, 
she has not yet received the photos of Margaret, Lily, 
May and Bertie. This should be seen to. I am sure also 
she would like photos of little Willie and Alice. 

" I also saw Mary Martin in her nun's dress. (She used 
to be a companion to my mother.) She is a bright, 
cheery little nun. 

* * * 

" So far as I can gather, there is no place in the United 
States in which on the whole the Catholic body, or in 
other words the Irish Catholic body, stands so well as in 
San Francisco in point of religious organization, educa- 
tion, mercantile, social and political position. 

4 ' I spent all yesterday afternoon and the greater part of 
to-day with Kate. At St. Mary's Hospital, the children 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 97 

of their schools — bright, healthy, intelligent-looking 
children they were — went through certain calisthenic and 
musical exercises, very pleasant to see and to hear. As 
to the latter I was rather surprised when the pianist who 
accompanied the singers struck up the English National 
Anthem of Dr. John Ball. ' God Save the Queen ' here in 
a Republican country ! However, my surprise soon ceased 
for the accompanying song was an ode to America, 
entitled ' America, ' and which as a national air ranks 
close after ' The Star Spangled Banner. ' 

4< I also went through the hospital wards. They are 
bright, cheery, and wonderfully neat and clean. They 
have wards for the poor, and also for those who can pay 
for higher class accommodation. Their patients are fre- 
quently Protestants — indeed Kate says she knows the 
Protestant Bishop very well from the fact of his frequently 
coming to visit his co religionists and subjects in the 
wards. 

" Later we drove (that is, Kate, Sister Mary Aquin 
Martin, James Gartlan and myself) in the convent carriage 
and pair to the Penitents' Home and Reformatory at 
Potrero avenue on the outskirts of the city. 

1 ' The establishment at Potrero was most interesting, 
and it is worth noting that, as regards the inmates of the 
Reformatory school, these are committed to the care of 
the good Sisters by the State authorities who pay for each 
child or at least contribute to the support of each child. 

" I think I have already mentioned poor old Miss Kate 
Russell, one of the three sisters formerly of Elm Hall, 
Dublin, who lived many years in Cincinnati. She is the 
last survivor. She is a ladylike, handsome old person 
who is ending her days with Kate in cheerfulness and 
peace. She was delighted to see me and seemed to feel 
the leave-taking a good deal. She thought me very like 
Kate, but my face seemed to awaken old memories, some 
sweet and some bitter, no doubt, that probably long had 



98 MARY BAPTIST RUSSELL 

slept. Poor dear, old soul, God has anyway given her a 
quiet evening for her life. 

" One interesting spot, and a sad one in some sort, too, 
is the Sisters' graveyard at Potrero. Here on the bright 
hillside, under the shades of the maple tree and the cotton 
wood, rest nearly one-half of that devoted band whom 
Kate led, now nearly thirty years ago, from the old world 
to the new, carrying the Cross with them. 



"I left poor Kate very sad, poor soul, but greatly 
pleased at having had the old land brought closer to her 
by my presence. God bless her and all the Sisterhood, 
who promised to pray very steadily for me and for mine. 
By the way, as Kate was the Reverend Mother, I was 
promptly dubbed ' Uncle, ' but without the ' Reverend. ' " 

Here our extracts, more copious than we intended, end. 
We may join to them a still more domestic report con- 
tained in a letter from R. M. to Mother Emmanuel, dated 
Nov. 15, 1883: " Clara says Charles looks exceedingly 
well and healthy after his trip, and says he feels quite 
lazy about taking up the heap of work that was waiting 
for him in London. He brought to each of us some little 
present from Reverend Mother of San Francisco. Mine 
was a very beautifully worked pair of scapulars. ' " 

An account of this meeting between brother and 
sister is also given by the Sister in a short letter, which 
we may quote in full : 

St. Mary's Hospital, S. F., 

California, Sept. 21, '8$. 

My Dear Matthew : — Before the day ends, I must 

write to you : first, as it is your feast, and we have all 

prayed for your every happiness as fervently as we could ; 

and, secondly, to let you know dear Charles is actually 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 99 

in California. He wrote me a couple of weeks ago from 
Winnipeg that I might expect to see him if nothing 
unforeseen occurred before the end of the month. On last 
Tuesday I happened to be in the parlor, when in walked 
a gentleman with gloves. "This is not a Californian, " 
said I to myself. And lo ! raising my eyes, I saw Charles, 
and, you will be glad to hear, looking remarkably well — 
bronzed, no doubt, by his travels in this warm climate. 
He had arrived in this city the night before from Puget's 
Sound, by steamer, of course, and I think, like myself, 
the sea does not agree with him, for he was a little upset 
by the voyage and called on our doctor, who merely pre- 
scribed certain regimen. Cousin Kate was delighted 
more than I can explain, to see Charles, and quite pleased 
to find the sweet, gentle expression of countenance so 
different from what his photograph would lead one to 
expect. He sat an hour or more, and then went to call 
on James Gartlan and Joseph Jennings. D. J. Oliver, one 
of our best and wealthiest Catholics, intended to have 
Charles his guest, but he had already settled himself with 
his friend at the Palace Hotel and did not care to make a 
change. Mr. Oliver was watching the list of passengers 
expected overland, by which route we supposed Charles 
would come, and he intended to meet him ; but he got 
here unknown to us all. He had calls from a half dozen 
gentlemen that night, and next morning, at 6.30, he drove 
in an open carriage to the Cliff House (via Golden Gate 
Park) where he and party had breakfast, and saw all that 
is to be seen there, in the way of seals, etc., etc., and got 
here at noon. He and I spent a quiet hour together, tell- 
ing me of all at home, the little ones, perhaps, getting an 
undue amount of time. I thought he had plenty of time 
at his disposal, and the Sisters had lunch prepared for 
him in the Community Room, when we found he had 
arranged to start at three for Yosemite Valley and was to 
lunch with Mr. Martin before, so we had to let him go 



IOO MARY BAPTIST RUSSKl.lv 

after a hurried visit to the Home or at least to a part of 
it. In one room the tears came to his eyes, when he saw 
dear Mamma's obituary hanging in a central position — 
the room belongs to Mary Devlin who lived at Mr. Greer's 
and knew Mamma, and Sisters M. Aquin and Emmanuel 
well. He expects to return on Tuesday, and I must get 
one day to show him the asylum, schools, etc. The 
weather is pretty warm at present, and I fear where 
Charles is now it must be extreme^ hot. It is too bad 
he is so hurried. I hope he won't be half dead from 
fatigue, running at such a rate. 

Now, my dear Matthew, may God bless you for ever 
and ever. Pra} r for me. 

Your affectionate sister, 
M. B. Russell, 

Sister of Mercy. 

To this same exciting event in the holy exile's life 
there is an allusion in a later letter of hers. She was 
a diligent reader of The Irish Monthly, which, in Feb- 
ruary, 1884, introduced thus its recommendation of 
Mr. James Britten's "Young Collector's Handbook 
of Flowering Plants." 

1 ' A recent traveller, whose unpublished notes would 
form a delightful volume, makes in one place the fol- 
lowing remark : ' Several times during this trip I 
found myself regretting that I did not know at least a 
little smattering of both botany and geology. Learn 
from this, O ye young! while there is yet time, to cul- 
tivate extended tastes. They will be a pleasure to 
you always, but especially a pleasure and an added 
interest when later in life you come to travel.' ' 

Writing on the 23d of March, Mother Baptist orders 
several copies of Mr. Britten's little book, and says : 
' ' I suspect the ' recent traveller ' alluded to at page 




LORD RUSSELL OF KILLOWEN, CHIEF JUSTICE OF ENGLAND. 




THE REV. MATTHEW RUSSELL, S.J. 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. IOI 

ninety-eight, of the February Irish Monthly, who re- 
commends the young to study botany as a source of 
additional pleasure when travelling, must be Charles. 
Xo doubt an insight into the workings of nature in 
the vegetable kingdom does add much to the pleasure 
of every observing mind whether travelling or not." 

Her guess, of course, was correct; and her thoughts, 
no doubt, travelled in the same direction if she read a 
"Pigeonhole Paragraph 1 ' in the same magazine for 
Ma\', 1 89 1, which might have been quoted in the 
opening pages of the present sketch as an illustration 
of the wholesome discipline of those young people's 
Killowen life. I venture to give it now out of its 
place, moral and all : 

" Half a dozen children, girls and boys, once lived 
very happily in an unpretentious but comfortable 
house, which was separated by only a couple of fields 
— their own fields — from the sea- shore. Could it be 
called the sea-shore ? In reality it was the shore of a 
large Irish bay, where the sea had room enough to 
behave like a real sea, yet not too wildly or too Atlan- 
tically. 

il The mother of these children used, once or twice 
a year, to travel to Dublin — which, to the children, 
seemed as far away as Chicago seems now. Ever}' 
time she came back it seemed as if they had lost their 
mother and found her again. 

1 ' To increase the warmth of her welcome the wise 
mother took care not to return empty handed, but to 
bring a gift for each of her young people. On one of 
these occasions there was a cloud over the sunshine. 
The excellent governess, who was the mother's vice- 
gerent, and who was always treated with the fullest 



102 MARY BAPTIST RUSSEUv 

confidence and respect, felt it her duty to report un- 
favorably on one of the boys. May God reward her 
for discharging a painful duty, not giving in weakly 
at the end and hushing it all up in the joy of the 
mother's home-coming ! And may God reward the 
good mother for not making light of the offence or 
seizing on some expedient for receiving the culprit 
back at once into favor ! No, the other gifts were 
distributed — one of them was 'Uncle Buncle's True 
and Instructive Stories about Animals, Insects, and 
Plants' — but the gift intended for the young evil-doer, 
whose transgression was not very wicked, was not 
merely withheld for a time, but never bestowed upon 
him. The credit of his subsequent career was, per- 
haps, partly attributable to the firmness and wisdom 
of his early discipline, of which this is a sample. 

"But 'these things are said for a parable.' The 
incident may illustrate God's way of dealing with us, 
His poor children. He leaves Himself to a great 
extent at our mercy. How many graces may He have 
designed for me and never conferred upon me for rea- 
sons similar to those which kept back forever the 
companion-volume to ' Uncle Buncle's True and In- 
structive Stories about Animals, Insects, and Plants ! ' 
Bartoli, in his Life of St. Ignatius, quotes this saying 
of his : ' God would readily bestow very many graces 
upon us if our perverse will did not place an obstacle 
to His liberality . ' What a pity! It might be well 
for us, each of us, in his own heart, to go deeper than 
would be becoming in this place into this sad subject 
of God's ungiven gifts, and to ask the Sacred Heart 
to save us from the consequences of past folly." 

As I have here perpetrated a flagrant anachronism 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. IO3 

in going back over more than twice ' ' twenty golden 
years ago," I may, also, before taking up again the 
thread of our story, record another curious little inci- 
dent belonging- to the same remote past, which the 
following paragraph in a recent Westminster Gazette 
called to mind : 

"The Lord Chief Justice w r as at Southampton 
yesterday to witness the sailing of the Kildonan Castle, 
w T hich is taking his son, Lieutenant Russell, R. A., 
to the Cape. In describing the farewell the Daily 
Mail says that the parting, although father and son evi- 
dently both felt it keenly, w 7 as not without its humor- 
ous side. When the siren had hoarsely ordered ' All 
ashore,' Lord Russell of Killow r en, from the quay-side, 
did his best to attract his son's attention, but in vain. 
Growing desperate, the Lord Chief Justice placed tw r o 
fingers to his mouth and blew a shrill whistle with an 
ease which a boy might have envied. Lieutenant Rus- 
sell, recognizing the signal, came to the taffrail smi- 
ling." 

Now it happens that this is a case of history repeat- 
ing itself ; for what the newspapers which retailed 
this very unimportant incident termed, " the L. C. J's 
whistle-call," had been used by him nearly sixty years 
before for this very purpose of attracting some person's 
attention at a distance. One evening he and his little 
brother strolled to the shore of Carlingford Lough 
along with a w T hite-haired peasant boy of the same age 
who grew up to be more than eight feet in height and 
some four hundred pounds in w r eight and to gain fame 
and fortune by being exhibited as Murphy, the Irish 
giant, over all the countries of Europe except Ireland 
— for he would never consent to make a show of him- 



104 MARY BAPTIST RUSSELL 

self in his own country. Well, this little fair- haired x 
boy and the two brothers plucked a store of the choicest 
ears of wheat in one of the fields near the beach and 
made their way out to a large fishing-boat which was 
anchored in the Glarry Hole and which the retreating 
tide had left accessible to little feet that had no objec- 
tion to being wet. They ensconced themselves snugly 
in the bottom of the boat, and, between telling stories 
and eating wheat, amused themselves so well that 
they forgot where they were till the returning tide 
had completely surrounded them. Probably they 
could have waded safely through the waves when they 
first perceived their situation; but they were afraid 
and remained in the boat till the tide had reached its 
full, leaving the castaways far out at sea, as it seemed 
to them. They were hardly in any danger, for the 
boat was securely anchored; but it was dark night 
and high tide and wild enough before some men rowed 
out to their rescue, having been made aware of their 
plight by means of that shrill whistling which boys 



i Both his parents were of quite ordinary stature. He died of 
smallpox, at Marseilles, towards the end of his 27th year ; but 
his body was brought home to Killowen, to be buried in 
the old Kilbroney graveyard near Rostrevor. The spot is 
marked by a large Celtic cross bearing this inscription : "Of 
your charity pray for the soul of Patrick Murphy, Killowen 
(the Irish giant), to whose memory this monument has been 
erected by a few friends and admirers. R. I. P." Then fol- 
lows this extract from the Parish Register : ' 4 This young man 
was admittedly the tallest man in the world at the time of his 
death, his exact height being eight feet one inch. He was 
born 15th June, 1834, and died at Marseilles, 18th April, 1862. 
His remains were embalmed, brought home, and interred in 
Kilbroney graveyard, iSth June, 1862.— J. McKenn^, C. C" 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 105 

are fond of producing by the combined efforts of their 
lips and fingers, and which a half century later en- 
abled the young artillery officer starting for the war 
to get a last glimpse of his father among the crowd on 
Southampton quay. It is, perhaps, useful to add that, 
instead of being made much of — as might have been 
the case with weak-minded parents — the rescued 
mariners were treated as criminals, and, next day, a 
gentle flogging with a not very formidable substitute 
for a cat-o' -nine- tails was administered to the responsi- 
ble leader of the party. The historic muse remembers 
what was the precise instrument employed on this 
solitary (and surely not very grievous) occasion, but 
shrinks from confiding it to the printer. 

I am not aware that Murphy, the Irish giant, ever 
visited San Francisco, like the oldest of his comrades 
in peril. The visit, from which we have strayed so far, 
was the last glimpse that Mother Baptist was to get 
of any of her kindred on earth. Lord Russell, indeed, 
paid a second visit to the United States, in August, 
1896, at the invitation of the American Bar Association, 
to whom he delivered an address on International Law 
and Arbitration at Saratoga Springs, August 20. On 
this occasion, however, he was not accompanied only 
by men like Lord Coleridge, Sir James Hannen, Mr. 
Bryce, M. P., and Sir Horace Davey, as in his first trip. 
From these he could separate, as he could separate from 
Sir Frank Lockwood and Mr. Crackanthorpe, Q.C — his 
travelling companions on the second occasion. But, in 
1896, he brought also with him his wife and one of his 
daughters; and he knew that they would be unequal to 
the additional fatigue of the second long journey that 
he had himself made in 1883. 



CHAPTER IX. 

SOMK INTERESTING BETTERS. 

Mother Mary Baptist's visit to Europe may be 
taken as dividing her American life into two parts, and 
that with the latter half we have now to deal. L,ike 
the first she began it as superior, 1 as she mentions in 
a letter addressed to " My dear Mother Mary Emman- 
uel de Sales Vincent, and all in the three houses" — 
namely, Newry, Rostrevor and L,urgan : 

" A joint letter is best, as I shall not have much time, 
and I ought to have written long before this. You know, 
from others, that I am safe at home since 23d of May. 
Next morning, at 10 o'clock, I got the keys of the house and 
the following Thursday was made Boss. So you see I 
was just in time. I found dear Sister Margaret Mary 



1 To the English translation of a singularly edifying book, 
' ' Mirror of the Virtues of the Mother Mary of St Euphrasia 
Pelletier, Foundress of the Congregation of the Good Shep- 
herd" (London : Burns & Oates, 1888), is appended a "Short 
Account of Her Work in the United Kingdom." Mies Joanna 
Reddan, with whom our readers are acquainted as Mother de 
Sales, the first Sister of Mercy to die in California, is properly de- 
scribed as Foundress of the House of the Good Shepherd in Lim- 
erick ; but the writer is not equally correct when she goes on to 
tell that "Miss Reddan made her profession as a Sister of 
Mercy in Kinsale and, finally, was sent thence as Superior- 
ess to found a house of her Order in California." The 
reader of our sketch is aware that the facts are still more edi- 
fying — that Mother de Sales' niece, who was her ' ' Reverend 
Mother," did not appoint her superior of the little missionary 
band, but placed her under one who had not half her age or 
experience. 

106 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 107 

wonderfully changed for the few months I was gone ; but 
she has rallied since and may linger months yet. She 
came over here for the Election but did not venture to the 
Chapel. The Archbishop visited her afterwards in the 
Infirmary and gave her permission to receive Holy Com- 
munion twice a week without having kept her fast. I 
told him how good your Holy Bishop is to your sick, but 
he only smiled. Dr. Delany only allows it twice a week 
also. 



" We have a poor cripple here who asked to be enrolled 
in the scapular on the Feast of the Visitation. The Sister 
expressed some surprise that he had never been enrolled 
before. 'Well, now, Sister, 'said the poor fellow, 'how 
could I wear the Scapular of the Blessed Virgin and I 
telling the boys the cigars I was selling were the best 
that could be got, and I knowing they weren't ? And I 
used to turn the spotted side of the oranges down, too. ' 
Had not the poor fellow a nice conscience ? I think I told 
you of some of the out-of the-way titles by which I am 
occasionally addressed. Since I returned I got a letter 
directed to the 'Virgin Mother in Jesus Christ '; that was 
diametrically opposite to ' Baptist Russell, Esq. , ' I got on 
another occasion. " 

After several pages of domestic gossip, profoundly 
interesting to her correspondents, she ends with ' ' a 
thousand loves to each dear Sister in all the houses." 
The religious vocation had evidently not killed all 
kindly feeling in Mother Baptist. She was not to be 
classed with those whom St. Paul accused of being 
sine affectione. 

To this second division of Mother Baptist's Califor- 
nia life belongs, almost exclusively, the large mass of 



108 MARY BAPTIST RUSSKU, 

her correspondence which has been placed in my 
hands. In that way, at least, she revisited constantly 
the dear island that lay far away over thousand 
leagues of land and sea. Writing on May 3, 1881, 
she says : 

" I believe that the population of Ireland is less than it 
has ever been. I am sorry. I love my native land more 
and more each day. " 

And her successor writes of her in some notes that 
she has furnished to me : 

"She loved Ireland with a deep, undying love. She 
felt keenly for its poor, and frequenty contributed to the 
relief of distressed districts ; and, when she was unable to 
do anything herself, she interested others in the good 
work. She took particular delight in praising any one 
who did any good for Ireland. Anything published 
about Lady Aberdeen, she always read aloud for the 
Sisters ; and many a time her fervent may God bless her 
must have done that lady good. No one ever rendered her 
a service that that same fervent prayer was not offered up 
for them." 

I have just now implied that Mother Baptist made 
her letter writing a w r ork of charity, zeal and edifica- 
tion. Her letters were full of facts that tended " to 
the A. M. D. G. — " as holy people sometimes say, 
who are not fully acquainted with the grammatical 
significance of those initials. It will not, I trust, be 
indiscreet to give as a specimen the following account, 
received at first hand, of the conversion of General 
Rosecrans and his brother, afterwards Bishop of Co- 
lumbus. It is contained in a letter which Mother 
Baptist wrote on the thirtieth of October, 1880 : 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 1 09 

" Our Vicar General came to me last Tuesday to ask me 
to entertain for a few hours the Ursuline Nuns, who were 
expected to arrive the following day, en route for Santa 
Rosa, where they have purchased a house and three acres 
and are going to open a boarding school. We were, of 
course, happy to do so and prepared a good lunch in 
the Community Room for them, and General and Mrs. 
Rosecrans, young Mr. and Miss Rosecrans, Father Pren- 
dergast the Vicar- General himself. One of the Sisters was 
a daughter of the General, and that was the reason of the 
whole family's being here. While the ladies were re- 
freshing themselves after the long journey by the appli- 
cation of soap and water, I had an opportunity of getting 
into conversation with the gentlemen and having heard 
that the General owed his conversion to the politeness of 
a peddler, I had the curiosity to ask was it so. He said 
that, though that settled the point, he had often thought 
of it before while studying the military profession at West 
Point. He then told me that he and a brother officer 
were one da}' walking, the road was in a horribje condi- 
tion and, at one point where it was particularly bad, a 
plank had been laid for foot passengers. Just as he and 
his companion got on it they perceived a poor man com- 
ing towards them and nearly half-way over, but as soon 
as he saw them back he walked to allow them to pass. 
The General turned to thank him for his politeness, and, 
seeing he carried a peddler's pack, asked what he had. 
The man answered : ' I am selling Catholic books. ' It 
seems that the General had often heard that Catholics 
had some dark secrets wmich they kept for themselves, so 
he said to his companion, ' We have heard awful things 
of these Papists, let us see what they have to say for them- 
selves. ' So saying he bought The Catholic Christian In- 
structed for himself and some other book for his friend, 
and you will say they studied their lesson well when I 
tell you the second officer is now a Paulist Father, Rev. 



IIO MARY BAPTIST RTJSSEU, 

George Deshon, and General Rosecrans is ever since a 
practical Catholic and has brought up his children the 
same ; his eldest son died a Paulist Father a couple of 
years ago, and two of his daughters joined the Ursulines. 
He was married at the time he became a Catholic, and his 
wife felt his change of religion deeply and seemed deter- 
mined to supply or rather atone for his defection by in- 
creased zeal ; but before many years she, too, opened her 
eyes to the true light and goes hand in hand with her 
husband in all good deeds. 

" Now about the Bishop. He was much younger than 
his brother and, at College, when he embraced the Catholic 
Faith. After leaving College he visited his brother, who 
wisely refrained from bringing the subject of religion 
much before him, but there were plenty of good Catholic 
books around, and the young man read them and they 
had the desired effect, but he was of a silent, thoughthful 
turn and said little or nothing. One day the General saw 
him apparently much amused at something he was read- 
ing and asked him what it was. The other answered, 
'Spalding's Critique on D'Aubigney's History of the 
Reformation, and I have just come to the story we used to 
be told of Luther's never once even hearing of the Bible 
until he accidentally met one and the reading of it opened 
his eyes to the errors of Popery. I confess it always 
struck me as a ridiculous story, but this writer tears it to 
pieces in style ! ' Another day when they feared he had 
met some accident when boating and were rejoicing at 
seeing him safely on shore again, His brother said, l To be 
candid, Sylvester, I was worried about your soul more 
than your body, for I think you know too much for it to 
be safe for you to die as you are, ' and sure enough he did 
know too much fo remain a Protestant any longer, and 
the very next day when the family were going to Mass he 
said to his brother, ' You had better ask that priest if he 
would come and examine if I know enough to be bap- 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. Ill 

tized. ' This is all I had time to hear for the ladies re- 
turned and other things had to be discussed. 

' ' But though conversions to the Faith are delightful, 
conversions from sin are still better, so I will ask a fer- 
vent Pater and Ave for a young man who died on Thurs- 
day last, having within a couple of days, made a general 
confesssion, been married, anointed and received the Holy 
Viaticum." 



CHAPTER X. 

IX>VK OF THE POOR AND AFFLICTED. 

I am not sure of the exact form of the saying which 
tells us that the happiest reign has the shortest his- 
tory. In like manner a uniformly holy and useful 
life does not furnish the vicissitudes which make a 
biography interesting. Some poet has summarized in 
a couplet a career that was in reality more praise- 
worthy than many a one full of the most striking 
incidents : 

" That he was born, it cannot be denied — 
He ate, drank, slept, wrote deathless works and died." 

In the case of our Sister of Mercy ' ' wrought ' ' 
should be substituted for " wrote." She nearly com- 
pleted her threescore years and ten, each day of all 
these years full of good solid work for God and His 
poor human creatures ; but one day was like another, 
and the beauty of her life lay rather in the perfection 
with which she fulfilled her duties and the quiet cheer- 
ful perseverance with which she gave herself to the 
realization of her high ideals from childhood till her 
latest breath. As Mother Columba, her successor, 
says ; " Her life was simple in the extreme. It was 

112 



PIONEKR SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 113 

her beautiful way of doing things that constituted 
their worth. Her deeds of charity and kindness will 
never be numbered in this world." 

Even as a child, she had shown special love for the 
aged and for the poor. I distinctly remember, 
through a vista of nearly sixty years, the positive 
delight and affection that shone upon her face as she 
looked at a poor old mendicant and his wife, to whom 
she had given a bowl of good soup. Her girlish 
theory and practice in those primeval days had a large 
share in inspiring twenty years afterward ' ' The 
Poor Man's Knock," of which the first stanzas may 
be quoted : 

' Tis many a year, a score and more, 

Since a little boy in blue frock 
Would run to open the great hall-door, 
Whose latch he scarce could reach from the floor — 

" It is only a poor man's knock. " 

The harsh word " beggar " was under ban 

In that quaint old house by the sea ; 
And little Blue Frock's announcement ran : 
" ' Tis a poor little girl — 'tis a poor blind man — 
Poor woman with children three." 

And when our little boy would say, 

" There's a poor person at the door, " 
The sister who carried the keys that day 
From a willing mother leave would pray 
To give to him of her store. 

The "poor person" fared none the worse if the 
little housekeeper for the week happened to be the 
future Mother Baptist. 



114 MARY BAPTIST RUSS3U, 

So was it from the beginning ; and till the end her 
grief was that she had not enough to give to the poor, 
that she was unable to relieve their wants as gener- 
ously as her heart yearned to do. In her visitation 
of the sick there were thousands and thousands of 
scenes like this, reported as follows by one of her 
young Sisters : — 

' ' I accompanied Reverend Mother on a visit to a 
poor sick woman who had four young children ; we 
found the poor creature lying on the floor, unable to 
help herself in any way. The room she occupied was 
almost destitute of furniture, but there was a rickety 
old bed and mattress. Reverend Mother asked the 
sick woman why she did not occupy the bed ? Was 
it not better than the bare floor ? She answered that 
her husband, a drunken, worthless fellow, had dragged 
her from it the previous night. The dear Mother 
went into the little adjoining room which served for 
kitchen, living room and all, got a little water and 
washed the poor woman's face ; then called in a child 
from the street and told her to borrow a nightgown 
from the next neighbor, which the said neighbor kindly 
gave (often we meet charity among the poor which is 
frequently wanting among the better class). Reverend 
Mother changed the creature's clothes, tied up the old 
bed with the help of her companion, placed the mattress 
on it and helped the sick woman into it. The poor 
woman blessed her and God who sent her to minister 
to her wants. This blessing of the poor the good 
Mother valued highly, and she herself frequently 
made use of the prayer when anything was done for 
her, ' May God bless you.' 

* ' Reverend Mother then went into the kitchen and 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 115 

out into the yard and collected sticks and paper, 
cleaned the little stove, made the fire and put on the 
kettle to boil, while at the same time she directed me 
to tidy the apartment. The good Mother made a cup 
of tea, she herself had brought all the necessaries. 
She took it to the sick creature who had had nothing 
of the kind for days. (The dear Mother, wdio was 
alw r ays only too ready to excuse faults in all, said that 
it was the want of little comforts when ailing, tired, 
overworked, etc., that caused many of the poor to 
have recourse to intoxicating drinks.) 

"While Reverend Mother was giving the poor 
woman the drink, I was cleaning the kitchen and 
found scraps of onions, small pieces of potatoes, etc., 
on a soiled plate and in order to wash this I threw the 
scraps away. Reverend Mother went into the yard 
again to hunt up more wood, etc. , and found what I 
had thrown out. She picked it up, found also a few 
small pieces of meat, placed all in a saucepan on the 
fire, and in a few minutes she had a nice little stew 
ready for the four children's supper, with the addition 
of some bread and tea." 

I shall let another Sister describe some other sick- 
calls made in company with Mother Baptist ; and I 
expect to be more than forgiven for not suppressing 
some very simple details : 

' * I well remember my first visitation with her. We 
went to one of the small alleys, up a rickety stairs. 
The patient was in bed (a querulous old maid). Rev- 
erend Mother spoke to her in a soothing tone for a few 
minutes, and asked her how she was since her recent 
visit. Then Mother pinned up her cloak, and she had 
a pair of sheets pinned around her, one in front and 



1 1 6 MARY BAPTIST RUSSEU, 

the other across and fastened behind, and a pillow- 
case pinned on each arm. The poor creature's bed 
was in a bad condition. Reverend Mother made it up 
fresh, while she directed me to tidy the room. Her 
prayers for the sick were soothing and consoling. 
Indeed, she fulfilled the precept of the Apostle ; she 
became all to all to gain them to Christ. On another 
occasion she went to visit a Protestant, whose wife 
and children were good Catholics. This man had 
been very ill for some time. It happened to be the 
Feast of the Holy Name. Mother spoke to him of the 
goodness of God, of Heaven, etc. Mr. W. answered 
rather sharply, ( he was quite satisfied as he was, that 
he never prevented his wife and children from follow- 
ing their religion,' etc. Mother said : l Well, Mr. W., 
you will have no objection if we say a prayer for you ? ' 
' Oh, no,' he answered. She knelt and recited the 
Litany of Jesus, oh ! with what unction ! Shortly 
after Mr. W. asked to be admitted into the Church, 
and died a most edifying death after a long and trying 
illness. 

" On another occasion Mother was looking for a 
house on one of the small streets, where a poor man 
was sick. Some children saw her looking for the 
number and said ' The sick man lives there, Sister ! ' 
She entered, and a nice woman met her in the hall and 
said, ' I think you must be making a mistake.' 
Mother said the children told us he lived here. The 
woman answered : ' It is true there is a very sick man 
here, but I am afraid that he would not see you ; he 
is a bigoted Protestant. I am a Catholic, Sister, but 
I have very little education, and I do not know how- 
to argue ; I simply pray for him.' Mother went in, 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 117 

and she saw by the man that he was black (not in 
color, but in heart), and very ill. She spoke a few 
words ; the tone of her voice was as a note of a w T ell- 
tuned instrument ; she said nothing of religion, she 
mentioned God and His goodness. This man was in 
comfortable circumstances and a Freemason. When 
leaving, Mother said, ' We have a call in this neigh- 
borhood ; would you like us to come in again ? ' He 
said yes, but it meant, ' I do not care.' Several times 
again Mother called, and had the pleasure of seeing 
him die a holy death. He suffered intensely, and 
could not suffer enough to atone for the past ; he re- 
nounced Masonry and offered his life's sufferings and 
death to God. 

' ' Another of her calls was an old woman, a convert, 
eighty-five years old, who was suffering for years from 
internal cancer. She was refined, but very poor. She 
could have every comfort if she renounced her religion . 
Her daughter, a woman about forty years old, took care 
of her. They had two rooms, kept scrupulously 
clean. Mother was a frequent visitor there. The 
smell from the disease was very offensive. Nothing 
consoled Mrs. J. so much as a visit from Mother and 
one of her lovely prayers ; she used to say so impress- 
ively for her the offering of suffering, ' O my God, I 
offer to you all I have suffered, all I am now suffering, 
and all I have yet to suffer in atonement for my sins,' 
etc. When any of the other Sisters called on Mrs. J. 
she would say, ' Mother Russell's daughters are wel- 
come, very welcome ; but no one's visit is like hers.' 
Many a time she would slip off her under-skirt and 
give it to some poor needy creature, take out her 
. handkerchief and wipe the sweat off their brow. Her 



Il8 MARY BAPTIST RUSSEI.lv 

charity was Godlike and her patience was like to that 
of the Spouse whom she served so long and faithfully. 
She listened and appeared so interested in the tales 
and sorrows of the poor ; she loved them in and for 
God ; she denied herself in order to help and give to 
them. She frequently told me that, no matter what 
she gave, God sent her its equivalent or gave it on 
the double. No matter how disagreeable the subject 
was, or tale confided to her, she never showed disgust 
or appeared wearied. I never saw her impatient or 
angry, and no matter how often one would go to her 
she never showed any displeasure ; one was always 
welcome to her time and advice. I remember being 
on eight visitations with her on one Good Friday in 
the early '8o's ; she was fasting, of course ; all very 
poor people, except one. This exception was a very 
wealthy gentleman, who was very ill, and his most de- 
voted wife was his nurse. Mother's manner to the 
seven poor cases was as respectful and attentive as to 
the rich ; she really loved the poor of Christ." 

The following example of her thoughtful charity 
seems to deserve the preference before countless others 
that must be passed over : 

1 ' She was a very poor beggar for herself and her 
works, but quite eloquent when writing for others. I 
remember the case of a woman who was in good cir- 
cumstances in the early days of San Francisco. This 
person had a daughter who was to be married, and the 
mother had not means to procure the outfit ; she came 
as usual to our dear Mother, and that good Mother 
wrote a touching letter to a very wealthy lady, whose 
only daughter was about to be married, saying what a 
blessing the mother's charity would bring on the 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 119 

future bride, if she (Mrs. W.) helped to make a fellow- 
creature happy, and how probably she knew the 
mother of the one for whom she was begging, when 
she was in very different circumstances, &c. 

' ' I made the remark to her, ' Would she stop at 
nothing? Was it in marriage she was now taking 
part ? ' When the good lady responded generously 
with quite an elegant outfit, even three pairs of lovely 
kid gloves, the good, dear mother took the greatest 
pleasure in displaying them to all the Sisters and ask- 
ing their prayers for the kind, generous donor, and 
for her daughter, who was soon to be a bride. The 
bridegroom was not a Catholic, but she had the hap- 
piness of seeing him a good practical one in a short 
time. I am sorry to say that he was not spared for 
this world, but trust that he now enjoys the happiness 
of Heaven. R. I. P." 

Mother Austin Carroll, of Mobile, thinks that her 
friend's greatest quality was perhaps her inexhaustible 
charity and compassion for those who needed help 
and sympathy. Another illustration of this tender- 
ness of heart may be found in an extract from one of 
Mother Baptist's letters : 

14 The Hospital keeps pretty well filled, notwithstand- 
ing the open opposition from many quarters. A young 
woman died here some time ago of consumption ; death 
was at hand when she came, but the good priest who 
sent her said it was a charity to take her, though nothing 
could be done, if it were only to give her a few hours' 
quiet before death. The poor soul had close quarters, and 
her two children were pulling and pulling her all day 
long, and their noisy plays were distressing to her. She 
lived only a couple of days. When the poor, desolate 



120 MARY BAPTIST RUSSEUv 

husband brought the little ones to the funeral, she looked 
so nice in her coffin, the children did not seem to know 
she was dead ; the eldest, about five years old, said to her 
father: 'Mamma's not coughing now. She's not sick 
now ; ' and she kept going from the coffin to the father, 
evidently puzzled; but when the last prayers were said, 
and the undertakers put the lid on, she burst into tears 
and threw herself into her father's arms, 'Why did you 
let my mamma die. O papa, why did you do it ? ' The poor 
man could do nothing but cry ; and indeed many present 
were also moved to tears. It was as touching a scene as 
I would care to witness, and we see many such. What a 
sad thing was the wreck of the ' Drummond Castle ! ' No 
wonder the bed of the ocean is called the largest cemetery 
in the world." 

As another revelation of this tender heart, I will 
give a letter written in one of her last years to a young 
girl who was confined to bed by a disease of the 
spine : 

My Dearest Gussie ; 

I think you must have made the prayer of St. Augus- 
tine your own — " Here burn, here cut, here do not spare, 
but spare me for eternity." Your mother tells me your 
sufferings are greater than ever. God's will be done. He 
promises to fit the back to the burden, and I am sure He 
will not fail to increase His grace and strength in your 
soul as He increases your pains, and then, dear Gussie, 
a moment of pain will be followed by an eternity of joy. 

Your dear mother, father and sister suffer at the sight 
of your sufferings, but do not let that grieve you. God 
will sustain them, and even reward them for all they suf- 
fer, and by being conformed to His will you will draw 
down many blessings on them. I do not fail to place you 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 121 

daily in the tender care of the Mother of Sorrows, but you 
know it was not God's will that she should have the con- 
solation of assuaging the pains of her Divine Son, and it 
may be that she sees it is more for God's glory, and your 
real good that you suffer more, and knowing you desire 
only God's will, she does not relieve you. But never fear, 
she will support and strengthen you ; so, dear Gussie, 
do not lose courage. What you have gone through is 
past forever, but the merit of it is before you. 

I missed your letters, and I am glad Mother has broken 
the ice. I know she will write again, hurried though she 
be. To-morrow will be the feast of St. Joseph. I give 
you special prayers on that day and during his octave. I 
don't ask you to pray for me, just one aspiration. May 
God continue to bless you, my dearest Gussie. 
Ever yours affectionately in J. C, 

Sr. M. B. Russell. 

To a younger sister of this good girl, Mother Bap- 
tist wrote as follows : 

San Francisco, April 24, 1896. 
My Dear Little Namesake : 

I was very much pleased to get your little note, but it 
had one great defect — you never mentioned Gussie. How 
came such an omission ? Now you have to write soon 
again, and tell me all about her, for I am always anxious 
to hear of her. Had you signed your letter Jean Redman, 
I would know very well who you are, but don't you think 
as you are a little girl, you would better make it feminine 
and write Jeanne Baptiste ? That is the way little Jeanne 
Fottrell writes her name. Both her grandmas are Jane, 
and to distinguish her she is called Jeanne. 

It will be very useful to learn German, so I hope you 
will avail yourself of the opportunity you now enjoy with 
the German Sisters, and learn to speak it. I suppose 



122 MARY BAPTIST RUSSKUv 

Eva knows last Sunday was the feast of St. Expedit, 
to whom she introduced us. We had never heard of 
him until she sent his litany. Tell her we all said a 
Novena in his honor, and think he did hurry up some 
matters for us, but much is needed, so let her con- 
tinue to remind him of our needs. He did something good 
for a poor little orhpan who invoked his aid, and the 
child sent me word that she will be "Sister Expedit" 
when she is grown. 

Your good Bishop Montgomery called to see Father 
McManus when he was sick in our hospital, and then 
came to see me. I was delighted to see him looking so 
well. I said the climate of Los Angeles must agree with 
him, and he replied, "Yes, indeed it does. " 

Now, dear Jeanne, I must bring this to a close, and 
wish you good-bye. Remember me in your prayers, and 
give my love to mother and all the family, but in a 
special manner to dear Gussie. I send a prayer to St. 
Joseph to keep in your prayer-book to remind you to pray 
for me at Mass. 

Ever, dear Jeanne, your affectionate 

Sr. M. B. Russell, 

Sister of Mercy. 

Three years earlier she wrote to Gussie in a true 
Christmas spirit ten days before the feast. 

San Francisco, Dec. 14, 1893. 
My Dear Gussie : 

Knowing you have to act " Santa Claus " for the little 
people, I send you this box of different things to help to 
sustain the Saint's good name. 

I trust, dear Gussie, you are a little easier, a little im- 
proved ; still, whatever God allows is for your good, so 
continue to say often, "God's holy will be done. " One 
such act of conformity in time of trial is, according to 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 1 23 

St. Augustine, more meritorious than thousands of acts 
of love when all goes smoothly. 

I hope your dear mamma is well. Give her my love 
and best wishes, and your papa, too, the same. Ask 
them to pray for me sometimes. I need not say a few 
lines, when you feel able to write, will give me pleasure. 
Wish all a happy, holy Christmas for me. Have you still 
a sister with the Sisters of the Holy Names ? I hope 
Louis and Lander continue a comfort to their parents, 
and Joseph also. 

Ever, dear Gussie, yours affectionately in J. C, 

Sr. M. B. Russell, 
Sister of Mercy. 



CHAPTER XI. 

INFLUENCE OF HER CHARACTER. 

The following is a sample of hundreds of similar 
instances of Mother Baptist's wide-spreading influ- 
ence that are known and of thousands that are 
unknown : 

" A missionary priest, one very much interested in 
conversions, met while visiting San Francisco recently, 
a lady, whom he found to be a convert of many years. 
Having asked the cause which led her into the true 
fold, she replied, ' Several years ago while crossing 
the bay in one of the ferry-boats, my attention was 
attracted by a crowd, talking quite excitedly. My 
curiosity being aroused, I made some inquiries. The 
object of the scene was a small friendless girl who was 
travelling alone. She had no home in the city nor 
friends to whom she could go. A suggestion was 
made that she be taken to St. Mary's Hospital. The 
Superior of that Institution was known to be a kind 
lady, who would doubtless have pity on the poor 
waif. Feeling deeply moved with compassion for 
the homeless child, I offered to conduct her thereto. 
Never shall I forget the welcome that awaited us — 
the homeless one was received with open arms by 
Mother Baptist Russell. Immediately preparations 

124 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 1 25 

were made to make her comfortable. No mother 
could have done more nor show more tender pity than 
this good Superior did for the poor forsaken child. 
This, I said to myself, is true Christian charity. It 
was then the seed of my conversion was sown, but it 
took many years and the cross to fructify it. At that 
time I had wealth at my disposal. Time and circum- 
stances brought a change into my life. It was a trial 
bitter and hard to bear, particularly so for one without 
religion. In my desolation I sought comfort from my 
friends, but alas ! in vain. It was then that the fore- 
going incident recurred to my mind. Serious thoughts 
took possession of me. I asked for instruction and 
was in a very short time received into the Fold, of 
w^hich Mother Baptist had been to me the beacon 
light.' " 

There was no dearth of objects for Mother Baptist's 
charity even in that rich young land. Writing in 
March, 1894, sne sa Y s : 

"I think I mentioned the crowds of unemployed 
men in this city for the last five months ; 589 at our 
door for breakfast yesterday. We had to employ a 
second baker. Some good people send flour, coffee 
and sugar. It is going on since October. About 
Christmas the number was over six hundred for a few 
days " 

And on the last day of that month, writing to her 
Sisters in Kinsale about the Golden Jubilee at their 
convent, she refers again to this less cheerful subject : 

1 ' You heard already of the hundreds who come to 
us daily for food. I regret to say the number is not 
lessened, but, thank God, we continue to get the 
wherewithal to give them every morning a pint of 



126 MARY BAPTIST RUSSEIX 

coffee and dry bread. Thirty barrels of flour, 300 lbs. 
of sugar and 100 lbs. of coffee came to-day from the 
good man, James Carroll, who sent a similar supply 
two or three times already. Mrs. Peter Donahue sent 
fifty dollars, and young Peter Donahue a hundred dol- 
lars for the same purpose. Others helped, but these 
are the largest benefactors. The number of men this 
morning was 658." 

One of her spiritual daughters, whose recollections 
go back to the year 1871, when the school of " Our 
Lady of Mercy " was opened, speaks of the manner in 
which Mother Baptist fascinated her young pupils in 
the class of religious instruction which she reserved to 
herself. n Asa school girl I revered her as a saint, 
and never changed my opinion. I never knew any 
one who so closely portrayed the life of our divine 
Lord. We loved her to give us our religious instruc- 
tions, and this duty for many years she reserved to 
herself, although she had innumerable other calls on 
her time. The Bible stories she told in such a fasci- 
nating way and so earnestly that we were deeply im- 
pressed, and the Scriptural quotations were so often 
repeated, in appropriate places, in the course of her 
instructions that we learned them without any labor ; 
in fact, it was the lesson we most loved. Many of the 
early pupils of the above mentioned school became 
religious — some have already won their crown, some 
are still working for it ; but I feel all would unite with 
me in attesting that they owe their vocation, under 
God, to the beautiful ' Gospel lessons ' she impressed 
on our young minds. We all loved her, she was so 
gentle, kind and interested in our sodalities, entertain- 
ments, etc., and gave us such encouragement." 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 1 27 

This witness ends with an opinion which is sup- 
ported by many of the extracts that we have given. 
11 Her most remarkable virtue, I think, was charity ; 
and this she tried to impress deeply on our young 
minds. Her charity was unbounded. She loved the 
poor, and could not even read of their wrongs without 
shedding tears, she had such a tender heart for all in 
affliction." 

One of the notes taken by Mother Baptist in one of 
her Retreats touches on this subject and some kindred 
topics : 

" A true Sister of Mercy, a true child of our be- 
loved Foundress, must have a very special love for the 
poor, as that is the spirit of our rules. Let us not 
forget His tenderness to sinners in our own necessary 
intercourse with the inmates of the Asylum, etc., etc., 
and in the schools, above all, let us win the young 
hearts to God by our gentle kindness and interest to 
all, carefully avoiding favorites. We can scarcely un- 
derstand the serious and evil consequences of unkind - 
ness to children, especial^ when accompanied, as it 
generally is, by a display of temper. It embitters the 
young mind, and does not convince it of the wrong it 
has done ; but rightly enough the child considers the 
religious is in fault. Often it drives the child to the 
public school, or, if not allowed by its parents to go 
there, it lessens the influence of the Sisters in general ; 
and, when the child is an old woman, the sting too 
often remains. When she becomes a mother herself , 
can we expect her to impress her children's minds with 
esteem for religious or to make any effort to send her 
little ones to them for instruction ? What a string of 
evils one person's want of the right spirit may entail! 



128 MARY BAPTIST RUSSEU, 

Above all, religious are under a certain obligation of 
praying for those under their care, which is but too 
little considered, I fear, by many. In this country 
and this century, when ' Liberty ' is the cry in every 
mouth, the training of youth is a laborious charge ; 
but when we see them so soon throw off the yoke of 
their parents, though the laws of God and man and 
even nature itself teach submission to them, we 
need not wonder that they rebel against us. Can I 
ever be sufficiently grateful for the blessings I 
enjoyed in childhood? Never, never. May God be 
praised ! ' ' 

As this is one of the very few spiritual notes of 
Mother Baptist's that have come into our hands, we 
may join with it some of the others. Thus in the 
Triduum which closed the year 1886 she prayed this 
prayer : 

" My God, I thank You for pardoning me so often. 
Give me grace to be faithful to You, inviolably faith- 
ful to You, hereafter. I do not ask for fervor nor de- 
light in Your service, but only the grace of fidelity to 
You in all things ; this is all I ask, all I desire." 

Here are three other very practical notes : 

' ' We know this to be true, humility is not a solitary 
virtue, but includes many. For are not the really 
humble also meek, gentle, laborious, patient, docile, 
obedient, cheerful ? In short, do they not possess 
every virtue ? And why not ? Does not the Scrip- 
ture assure us ' God giveth His grace to the humble ? ' 

"Our nature inclines us to ease and comfort, and 
we must be on our guard lest under pretext of necessity 
we indulge it by unnecessary sleep, rest, etc. But, as 
it is an obligation to preserve our health, it is best to 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 1 29 

be guided on this point as on all others by obedience, 
always mistrusting ourselves when we side with nat- 
ural inclinations. 

" Our rules are the expression of the Divine Will in 
our regard ; can we then deceive ourselves by think- 
ing we are fulfilling this obligation while we are neg- 
ligent in the observance of the duties prescribed by 
our rules? Among our duties those regarding the 
immediate service of God are too often the very ones 
we are inclined to curtail or perhaps even neglect alto- 
gether. Considered in one sense, all the duties pre- 
scribed are of equal importance and our holy Foun- 
dress puts meals, recreation, etc., on a par with Mass, 
lecture, etc. ; but as our own sanctification is our pri- 
mary object, and as without God's help (which is 
chiefry obtained by prayer) we can do nothing merit- 
orious, we must therefore see that our spirituals are to 
hold the first place, and Superiors will be accountable 
to God if they do not afford their subjects time to dis- 
charge the devotions that are of obligation. But it is, 
generally speaking, our tepidity and not real want of 
time prevents us giving the prescribed time to medita- 
tion, etc. If we yield to the suggestion of nature and 
the enemy of our perfection and remain in bed for 
every slight cause, we are necessarily hurried to get 
through with our duties and the personal one, ' Medit- 
ation,' is the one to suffer. Then again our infidelity 
(though we may excuse it) is sure to deprive us of 
the fervor and unction w r e might otherwise experience 
and so the duty is irksome and w r e leave it sooner than 
absolutely obliged." 

Internal evidence " shows that it was before Sacra- 
mento ceased to belong to the Archdiocese of San 



130 MARY BAPTIST RUSSEU, 

Francisco that Mother Baptist wrote this undated let- 
ter to her " dearest Sister Mary Regis," who no doubt 
died several years before herself: 

' ' Your letter this morning made me shed tears of 
holy joy. The sentiments you express of entire and 
loving abandonment into the hands of God's providence 
are just what I most wish for you and for all of us. 
If it were God's will, we would no doubt be glad to 
have you stronger, so that you might continue longer 
to labor for His glory ; but if He is pleased to call you 
from us, I trust it is that your appointed task is fin- 
ished and the reward at hand. For we cannot doubt 
but that he who rewards the giving of a cup of water, 
which costs neither labor nor money, will amply re- 
ward the exertions you have made, in spite of weak 
lungs and a hot climate, to instruct his little ones in 
the right way. If we were more numerous, and if this 
climate was not evidently more trying on you than 
that of Sacramento, we would probably take you down; 
but, as it is, manage yourself as best you can, taking 
and asking for anything in the way of nourishment 
and rest that will help you to keep up, and arranging 
your duties with the same object. If you can change 
a duty with a Sister occasionally, ask her freely : for 
instance, though you had better for a time keep the 
management of the Children of Mary, spare your voice 
and don't instruct, but select a book for one of them 
to read while you are there, or get Sister Mary de 
Sales to give the instruction." 

This letter is unfinished on the one leaf that has 
reached me. The page ends with no signature, and 
on the back of it the following verses are w T ritten in 
imitation of type ; 



PIONKER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 1 31 

Father, the cross Thou layest on me 

I Thy child most humbly kiss, 
Nor would I, though choice were given, 
Ask for any one but this. 

Give me only grace to bear it 

Calmly, humbly, cheerfully ; 
Then whatever Thou may'st send me 

Will be welcome unto me. 

Blind, unworthy, faithless atom, 

How can I presume to choose ? 
Or Thy gift, All-wise Creator, 

Venture madly to refuse ? 

I, who, if Thy grace direct not, 

Know not what to ask or shun — 

Oh ! my tender, loving Father, 
Not my will, but Thine be done. 

' ' Thy will be done ' ' was the motto on Mother 
Baptist's profession-ring ; and one of her favorite ejac- 
ulations was always, "May the most just, the most 
high, and the most amiable will of God be in all 
things done, praised and exalted above all forever ! " 
Another was, " We praise and adore Thee, O divine 
Providence. We resign ourselves to Thy holy will." 

One of her sisters in religion says that Mother Baptist 
could not speak of the Passion of Our Divine Lord 
without being moved to tears ; and she thinks that she 
shed tears every time that she prepared for confession. 
It is needless to say that all through .her life she was 
in a very special manner devoted to the Blessed Sacra- 
ment. Every new house she founded was a new home 
for our Sacramental Lord, wdiere He was sure to be 



132 MARY BAPTIST RUSSKIX 

faith fully served and fervently adored. The Sister 
whom we have quoted several times says in a letter, 
' ' I have just been reading your little book, ' Close to the 
Altar Rails,' and a passage about ' Jesus of Nazareth 
passing by ' brings the dear Mother very near to me. 
For several years, perhaps twelve, it has been my very 
happ3 T privilege to accompany the priest with bell and 
candle when he takes Holy 'Communion to any of the 
Sisters or patients in the hospital. I always told Rev- 
erend mother beforehand on these occasions that Jesus 
of Nazareth would soon pass b}^. I can see her even 
now raise her calm, lovely eyes heavenward, and a 
moisture of love would gather in them ; and then she 
would pray a silent prayer, and then a smile and fer- 
vent ' God bless you/ would send me rejoicing on my 
duty of love." 

An old pupil of Mother Baptist spoke lately of her 
religious instructions, especially about Holy Commun- 
ion, and her manner of reading the sixth chapter of 
St. John, which this lady still reads on the eve of 
Holy Communion, while she recalls her beloved 
Mother's instructions and the very tones of her voice. 
We may pass on from this subject, after inserting one 
of Mother Baptist's notes of a certain Annual Retreat: 

" No wonder the good Father expressed his appre- 
ciation of the beautiful instruction of our holy 
Foundress, on the Blessed Sacrament, contained in 
our Holy Rule. But he was especially struck with 
the wisdom of her words, ' In all their difficulties, 
troubles and temptations, the Sisters shall seek corn 1 
fort and consolation at the foot of the altar.' Not (as 
nature too often would incline and Satan always 
prompts us to do) from our Sisters, to whom we can- 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 1 33 

not confide our troubles, difficulties or temptations 
without almost certain injury to them as well as to 
ourselves. If w 7 e are wise, we wall seldom, and better 
still, never open our minds on the trials we meet except 
to our Superior and Confessor, and not even to them 
until we have with filial confidence talked it all over 
to our sweet, loving Lord who awaits us day and 
night in the Tabernacle and says as He did in the 
Scripture : ' Come to Me all you who labor and are 
heavy burthened and I will refresh you.' " 

In putting these notes together, I have, perhaps, 
dwelt too exclusively on Mother Baptist's personal 
qualities to the neglect of her work. Those especially 
who live on the spot, and know the details of the subject 
far better than any one at a distance can know them, 
will claim that I have not chronicled the begin- 
nings and the developments of the various institutions 
which her prudence allowed her zeal to undertake. The 
history of St. Mary's Hospital would, by itself, form 
an interesting volume. Before, however, attempting 
a brief account of these charitable enterprises, space 
may be found for a few more of those personal trib- 
utes that have come under my notice. 

As far back as the early sixties, a good man, long 
since dead, Mr. Michael Robert Ryan, of Temple 
Mungret, Limerick, repeated to me the opinion of a 
sea-captain who had brought his vessel up the 
Shannon and had come to Mr. Ryan, either as Mayor 
of Limerick at the time or consul for some foreign 
country. During his previous voyage this gentleman 
had called at San Francisco, where he saw and heard 
enough to make him speak to a stranger of Mother 
Russell as already " a power in the States." But 



134 MARY BAPTIST RUSSEU, 

much more valuable is the testimony of one who had 
better means of judging than this sturdy captain can 
have had. Father Peter O'Flinn, S. J., now working 
at Melbourne in Australia, was for some time a mem- 
ber of the Jesuit community at San Francisco. He 
writes thus after her death : 

" I wish that a true ' L,ife ' of her could be written 
and published, for, if it were composed with a full 
knowledge of her and her works, I think it would be 
useful and edifying to all of us. Mother Baptist 
appeared to me to possess the qualities of head and 
heart, natural and supernatural, to fit her in an emi- 
nent degree for the office of Superioress. So well and 
so satisfactorily and so successfully did she perform 
her part that she was selected for that post six times, 
or rather, I should say, as often as the rules per- 
mitted. Many were the virtues, amiable and admir- 
able, that adorned her character and conduct. But 
one in particular, or rather a combination of them all, 
made her administration unique and preeminent. In 
the large community of nuns and in the various estab- 
lishments connected with the convent — the hospital, 
the industrial school, the home for destitute girls, and 
the Magdalen Asylum, all under her charge — every- 
thing was carried out with such perfect order and 
suavity that there was no clatter, no rushing, no con- 
fusion, no collision. Everything was done with the 
precision and smoothness of clockwork. So much so 
that an eminent politician said one day, 'She could 
govern the United States better than most of our 
men.' " 

Another priest, who knew Mother Baptist in a mere 
passing way, visited San Francisco in quest of funds 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 1 35 

for the completion of the new church at Omagh. The 
Mother Superior of St. Mary's Hospital might well 
have pleaded her own pressing wants as an excuse for 
not contributing to so remote an object ; but it seems 
she did not. " Mother Russell impressed me," writes 
Father McGlade, " with her business-like air and 
quiet power, and her conversation and demeanor 
served still more to strengthen that impression. Her 
kind sympathy and charitable disposition, as evidenced 
in my own regard by a substantial subscription to the 
object of my mission, showed also that underneath 
the solid, firm exterior which made her a fit ruler for 
the largest hospital in San Francisco, there lay hidden 
those interior virtues which befit the model religious. 
It was these qualities that made her name a household 
word all over. San Francisco and secured for her many 
remarkable manifestations of confidence and esteem." 

A still more competent witness is a member of 
Mother Baptist's Community, who attaches no signa- 
ture to her very simple deposition. 

"I knew Rev. Mother Russell for years. During 
that time I could not fail to notice that she was a per- 
fect religious, schooled in the practice of every virtue, 
but remarkable above all for unbounded confidence 
in Divine Providence, forgetfulness of self, and con- 
sideration for others. When I was in Sacramento, 
being but a postulant and unaccustomed to the cli- 
mate, I felt the heat very much and was not slow in 
expressing my feelings in regard to it. Rev. Mother 
took in the situation at once, but instead of correcting 
me there and then for my want of mortification, as 
another would have done, she said nothing, but pres- 
ently adopted means to make me feel cool and comfort- 



136 MARY BAPTIST RUSSEU. 

able. When the Sisters went into retreat— it was my first 
— the kind Mother feared the eight days' silence would 
be too much for me, so she said : ' My dear, when- 
ever you see me disengaged, come and speak to me.' 
Glad of the chance, I obeyed literally, and though I 
went so often, she never manifested the slightest 
shade of annoyance and always received me most gra- 
ciously and did all in her power to cheer me and make 
me happy. One conversation I had with Mother some 
time previous to her death impressed me very much 
and serves to show her beautiful spirit of forbearance. 
I cannot remember her exact words, but the substance 
was as follows : Speaking of zeal, she said, that, if we 
remembered how patiently God waits for the repent- 
ance of sinners, we would be more patient with those 
who do wrong. We cannot force people to do right. 
God does not do so. How easily He could stop all 
the evil-doing in the world ! But he chooses rather 
to suffer it and wait long for the good proceeding from 
man's free will." 

Mother Austin Carroll, now of Mobile and Selma, 
whose " Leaves from the Annals of the Sisters of 
Mercy," we have quoted more than once, says in a 
private letter : ' ' The greatest quality Mother Baptist 
possessed was, I think, an inexhaustible charity and 
compassion for those who needed help and sympathy, 
for orphans, for all." And in another letter: IC I 
never enjoyed any period of my life more than the time 
I spent with her at San Francisco ; and she used to say 
that she thoroughly enjoyed the time she spent with me 
in New Orleans. The Sisters were delighted with her, 
she was so gay, so full of anecdotes, and such a de- 
lightful addition to our little company at recreation. 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 1 37 

She petted the orphans whenever she met them, and 
preferred to stay at the Orphan Asylum. As a story- 
teller, she was unique. It seems to me that I regret 
her more and more every day." This last allusion to 
Mother Baptist's skill as raconteuse suggests the re- 
mark that here again she took after the parent to 
whom she was often compared. Her mother re- 
sembled the lady whom Mr. Thomas Arnold describes 
in his recently published "Passages in a Wandering 
Life." She was noted for her powers of conversa- 
tion, which was that of the old school — more dignified, 
correct, and deliberate than has for many years been 
the fashion." In her stories and anectodes, Mrs. 
Russell would sometimes encounter a person and accost 
him where her young listeners would be inclined 
merely to meet and speak to him. In this feature of 
her story-telling and conversation Mother Baptist 
seems to have hit on a mean between the styles of the 
two generations — less Johnsonese than the elder, less 
slipshood than the 3 T ounger. 

Mother Austin Carroll did not wait for Mother Bap- 
tist's death to praise her. As far back as "Shrove 
Tuesday, 1882," writing from New Orleans to Mother 
Emmanuel Russell of Newry, she speaks of both her 
sisters, the dead and the one then living still : 

' ' You may well be congratulated on having Mother 
Baptist Russell for your sister. It would not surprise 
me to hear that she wrought miracles, and, if you 
knew me, you would learn that, though I take rather 
mild views of people in general, I am hard to be 
pleased in my saints. And, as I am under obligations 
to that dear holy soul, let me tell you, if ever I can 
oblige you, command me, for it would give me great 



I38 MARY BAPTIST RUSSELL 

gratification to serve any one whom she loves. This 
is a great deal more than I would venture to say to 
herself. I said a good deal on the same subject a few 
days ago to Father Theobald Butler, S. J., who is 
Provincial of the Jesuits in the South. We were 
speaking of The Irish Monthly, of which I take six 
copies, one for each of our branches,, and he spoke of 
Father Matthew Russell with great interest and affec- 
tion. ' If he is only a little like his transported sis- 
ter/ said I, ' I can readily believe all the good things 
3^ou say of him.' I had the pleasure of meeting your 
Sister Mary Aquin (R.I. P.) at St. Mary's of the Isle, 
Cork, in 1854, I think. I had just received the w T hite 
veil — she too was a novice — she was next to me in the 
refectory and I had charge of her, so we had time to 
become great friends. I had a sincere esteem for her. 
We had a General Communion for her here when the 
news of her death came. So, my dear Mother, you 
will be good enough not to regard me as quite a stran- 
ger." 

The following extract from one of Mother Baptist's 
own letters throws some light on her character. It 
was addressed to one of her branch communities on 
the 1 6th of February, 1890: 

" You must all pray that God will bless us, and all 
try to be extra good, exact and pious this Lent. Of 
course fasting from food is not included in the good 
things, but cheerfulness at duties, exactness, charity, 
silence, attention and fervor at prayer, etc. At our 
last meeting I said a good deal on the evil of repeating 
remarks we may have heard to the person of whom 
they were made. It is no palliation of the fault; or at 
least very little, to say, ' We did not divulge the name.' 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 139 

If the one of whom the remarks were made, and to 
whom they are repeated secondhand, has the heavenly 
w r isdom to take no notice further than to humble her- 
self and resolve on amendment, if culpable, it would 
do her good instead of harm, and the chatterer would 
be the only one injured ; but unfortunately some per- 
sons do not alone feel hurt, but express their dis- 
pleasure, never cease till they find out w T ho made the 
remark, or perhaps settle on one that is innocent, and 
will then rake up the faults of this person, as if that 
w r ould lessen their own guilt, and their poor minds be- 
come embittered and disturbed all from the unguarded 
tongue and their own pride. Now I do not know that 
this applies to any of you, but it is no harm to be fore- 
warned ; so think it over, and you will be less likely 
to fall into this serious fault. I also spoke of the evil 
of curiosity and inquisitiveness. Let us think of St. 
Paul's w r ords, ' I know nothing among you but Jesus 
Christ and Him crucified. ' Well, my T dear Sisters, 
God bless y-ou all." 

The preceding year Mother Baptist wrote a Christ- 
mas letter to one of her branch houses, in which 
among other wise and cheery things she says : 

" I know you will each do all in your power to con- 
tribute to the general happiness during this joyous 
season, and that you will make good use of the quiet 
three days to lay in spiritual strength for the coming 
year, and repair the rents caused by y^our struggles 
during the time that is past. You can renew your 
vows in concert as we will do here, that is, you (Sr. 
M. Nolasco) say the w T ords aloud, and the others join 
you. I hope you are keeping a good fire, and that 
those w r ho have cold feet, w^hich I dare say all have, 



140 MARY BAPTIST RUSSEIJ, 

get a jar of hot water in their bed at night. We are 
not so mortified as to wish to be kept awake all night 
with cold feet. Our mortification must be bearing 
with all that is disagreeable in each other, laboring 
hard with stupid, wilful children, accepting humbly 
the thanklessness of their dissatisfied parents, and the 
many other disagreeable things we meet with in our 
daily life. All this is true mortification, and very 
pleasing to God, besides showing more of a really mor- 
tified spirit than any corporal penance we could under- 
take." 

She ends her motherly encyclical thus : 
" Now, my dear Sisters, one and all, may God bless 
you, and may you be every one more pleasing to our 
sweet Infant Saviour than you ever were, and you 
know that means may you be meek, loving, humble, 
laborious, forbearing, etc. I^et us pray fervently for 
each other. I hope that you have a little Crib, and 
that you will be happy in God." 

The description that one of the poets of her adopted 
county, Colonel John Hay, gives of a certain Sister 
St. Luke, needs to be modified in order to suit Mother 
Baptist : 

" She lived shut in by flowers and trees 
And shade of gentle bigotries. 
On this side lay the trackless sea, 
On that the great world's mystery ; 
But all unseen and all unguessed 
They could not break upon her rest. 
The world's far splendors gleamed and flashed, 
Afar the wild seas foamed and dashed ; 
But in her small, dull Paradise, 
Safe housed from rapture or surprise, 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 141 

Nor day nor night had power to fright 
The peace of God that filled her eyes. M 

Her convent home lay between the trackless sea and 
one of the capitals of the great w 7 orld. She made it 
her earthly Paradise, but it was not particularly small 
and certainly not dull. The poet comes nearest to her 
at the last ; for neither night nor day nor any event, 
agreeable or untoward, could disturb ' ' the peace of 
God that filled her eyes." More appropriate to our 
Irish American nun is the fine sonnet of our Irish 
Catholic poet, Aubrey de Vere : 

' ' A tranced beauty dwells upon her face, 

A lustrous summer- calm of peace and prayer ; 

In those still eyes the keenest gaze can trace 

No sad disturbance, and no trace of care. 

Peace rests upon her lips, and forehead fair, 

And temples unadorned ; a cloistered grace 

Says to the gazer over-bold, ' Beware, ' 

Yet love hath made her breast his dwelling-place. 

An awful might abideth with the pure, 

And theirs the only wisdom from above, 

She seems to listen to some strain obscure 

Of music in sidereal regions wove, 

Or to await some more transcendent dower 

From heaven descending on her like a dove. " 

It is written of St. John Berchmans that his laugh 
was rather seen than heard ; and almost to the same 
effect one of the" notes about Mother Baptist tells us 
that " she rarely laughed outright. She would smile. 
She had an inimitable smile by which she could ex- 
press ever so much fun or pleasure as the case might 
be." 



142 MARY BAPTIST RUSSEU, 

Quietly and solidly happy herself, she was constantly 
striving to promote the real happiness of others- Her 
thoughtful kindness for every one in any sort of trou- 
ble was untiring and inexhaustible. She did not shrink 
from relieving the necessities that appealed to her in 
the way that most persons find most irksome — namely, 
by procuring from others the means of doing so. She 
had no scruple '- in asking good. Mr. Carroll for suffi- 
cient cash to pay a certain person's way on the cars 
(his railway fare) to IyOS Angeles and to get him a few 
underclothes." And when good Mr. Carroll (God 
bless him) sends fifty dollars for the purpose, she 
writes from the asylum to some Sister, that ' ' twenty 
dollars is sufficient for the trip, five or six in his pocket, 
and with the rest get him what you see he needs 
most to make a decent appearance when presenting 
himself." 



CHAPTER XII. 

FOUNDATIONS AXD CHARITABLE WORKS. 

Wk cannot, however, glance through these letters 
any longer, but must keep our promise of giving- some 
account of the institutions that Mother Baptist 
founded and the charitable works that she carried on. 

Praise be to God for all the good, known and un- 
known, that has been wrought for the glory of God 
and the salvation of many of His human creatures 
through the gentle and modest ministry of the Sisters 
of Mercy in California since New Year's Day, 1855, 
when the newly-arrived Sisters visited for the first 
time the County Hospital of San Francisco. How 
many fervent Communions, how many devout Visits, 
how many holy Masses, since January 3, 1855, when 
an altar was erected and the Blessed Sacrament was 
brought for the first time to the small house in Vallejo 
street, which was their first home, before they re- 
moved on the 3d of March following to a larger 
house in Stockton street ! 

In an early portion of this sketch a slight account 
was given of the first beginnings of St. Mary's Hos- 
pital, of which the foundation stone was laid by Arch- 
bishop Aletnany on the 2d of September, i860, when, 

143 



144 MARY BAPTIST RUSSELL 

as the stone itself recorded, Pius IX was Pope, James 
Buchanan was President of the United States, and 
John G. Downey, an Irishman and a Catholic, was 
Governor of the State of California. * In the 
stone, along with many interesting documents and 
holy objects, was deposited "some clay from old 
Ireland." 

Even when St. Mary's Hospital rose to its full 
height from this foundation, it was far short of the 
completeness which it had attained on the 8th of Sep- 
tember, 1 89 1, when Mother Baptist described it to her 
aunt, a Sister of Mercy in Dundalk, who is still living 
when the letter is transcribed, but may have passed to 
her reward before it is printed. 

' ' Every one says the Hospital is very perfect. 
There is every convenience that could be imagined : 
electric bells and lights, speaking tubes, a passenger 
elevator, chutes for soiled clothes, letters, dust, etc., 
etc. The three principal corridors are 200 feet long 
with large triple windows at each end ; there are 
thirty-five private rooms, about a dozen of which are 
double, and there are eighteen wards, but none large 
— the largest only accommodating twelve. The bath- 
rooms, water-closets, and lavatories are all nicely 
tiled, both floors and walls, to the height of six feet ; 
and the basins, slabs, etc. , are marble. The house is 
heated throughout by steam. But the grandest part 
of all is the mansard story, in which the operat- 
ing rooms are situated. There are two antiseptic 



* The first Governor of this State, Mr. Peter H. Burnett, 
became a Catholic also and wrote " A Lawyer's Way into the 
Catholic Church." 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 1 45 

rooms, the ceiling, walls and floors are tiled, the basins 
and slabs marble, and they are so constructed that the 
whole can be hosed out, and the water flows to one 
corner and runs off down a marble gutter. The oper- 
ating tables are heavy plate glass in nickel-plated 
frames. The ophthalmic and electric rooms are fur- 
nished in hard wood with oilcloth on floor. There is 
a large waiting-room off which these rooms all open. 
We have got the attic hard finished, and one end is for 
the female employes, the other for the male. The 
operating rooms are placed between them and only 
reached by the elevator. There are three flights of 
stairs, one in our end of the building. We have 
better and more ample accommodation than formerly, 
the chief things being fine offices for the Superior 
and Bursar, which we needed much. All this, of 
course, has increased our debt, but I have no doubt 
with the blessing of God we shall pay it off in due 
time. We have an elegant suite of offices — a dining- 
room, drug-store, and a private parlor for the doctors 
on the first floor ; also parlors and a very neat 
mortuary chapel from which the funerals take 
place without being obliged as formerly to go from 
the hall door. Altogether, our place is now very 
complete." 

How many happy deaths has St. Mary's Hospital 
secured for poor creatures that turned to God sincerely 
at the last ! Mother Baptist's letters for forty years 
are full of consoling instances. Space cannot be 
afforded for any of them, but we may refer to one who 
was not a patient but a physician at St. Mary's. If 
Dr. Robinson had not attended at St. Mary's profes- 
sionally, he would hardly have died a Catholic death 



146 MARY BAPTIST RUSSKIX 

under the striking circumstances described in one of 
Mother Baptist's letters. 

" He was a good man, and God rewarded him with 
the true Faith. Many times we feared he might be 
carried off suddenly without having taken the final 
step, and Mrs. R. suffered great anxiety on this ac- 
count, for she understood the precarious state of his 
health ; but, as I dare say you have heard, he had the 
grace to call for the priest when he found himself 
sinking on the train, although surrounded by Protest- 
ants. And indeed, no Catholics could have behaved 
better than they did. They got the car, in which the 
doctor was, detached from the train, and they brought 
the priest from the town at which they stopped. After 
the priest had paid him a long visit in private, the 
gentlemen were summoned and knelt (not a usual 
thing for non- Catholics) while the last Sacraments 
were being administered, one of them removing the 
doctor's socks. When the priest had taken his de- 
parture, the poor doctor said to those present, ' Now, 
thank God, I have received the Sacraments of the 
Catholic Church, and if you can only bring me home 
to die, it is all I ask.' The poor man expired when 
only half-way on his journey. It was a terrible shock 
to his wife, but all the bitterness was gone when she 
thought of the wonderful grace accorded to him." 

In another letter, after telling about a young man 
who had applied for admission into the French hospi- 
tal and then into the German hospital and had 
been refused because manifestly in a dying state, 
but who was admitted into St. Mary's and quickly 
prepared for his first Confession k and Communion, 
as Baptism was the only sacrament he had received, 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 1 47 

Mother Baptist goes on to say : ' ' Our doctors 
don't like our taking these dying cases in. as 
it necessarily makes our death rate high ; but what do 
we care for that ? Many souls are saved, and they will 
pray for us." 

Mother Baptist was not much more than a year at 
work in San Francisco before she was asked to send out 
a colony from her infant convent. The first branch 
house was Sacramento, then a part of the diocese of San 
Francisco. On the feast of St. Joseph, 1856, Arch- 
bishop Alemany, in honor of the saint, whose feast was 
that day celebrated, and still more in honor of the 
Blessed Sacrament from which the city took its name, 
begged that some Sisters might be sent to look after 
the neglected children of Sacramento. It was while 
accompanying her young Mother Superior thither, on 
her first visit of exploration before yielding to the 
Archbishop's entreaty, that the Venerable Mother de 
Sales caught the fatal malady mentioned towards the 
beginning of our narrative, which made her the proto- 
martyr of the Calif ornian Sisters of Mercy ; for at that 
time the journey, which can now be made in three or 
four hours by rail, took a day and a night on the deck 
of a miserable steamer on the Sacramento River. A 
colony of five Sisters was led forth by Mother Baptist 
in October, 1857. In spite of many vicissitudes and 
even catastrophes, the Sisters have carried on success- 
full} 7 theirvarious w T orks of mercy for more than forty 
years. The community, perhaps reluctantly, became 
independent of the Mother House when, in a rearrange- 
ment of the ecclesiastical geography of the Pacific 
Slope, Sacramento was taken from San Francisco and 
joined to Grass Valley. It has superseded the latter 



I48 MARY BAPTIST RUSSKU, 

in giving its own name to the See now occupied by Dr. 
Thomas Grace, who lately succeeded Dr. Manogue, 
himself the successor of Bishop O'Connell, the first 
Bishop of Grass Valley — all Irishmen, like their met- 
ropolitan, the Most Rev. Patrick William Riordan, 
Archbishop of San Francisco. 

The first offshoot that was independent from the 
start was the convent of Grass Valley. Our account 
of this foundation will be confined to a letter of Mother 
Baptist's which we shall give nearly in full, though it 
touches on several other topics besides our present 
point. We trust that the passage about the Retreats 
will not vanish in passing through the press as some 
similar passages have done ; for such things illustrate 
one of Mother Baptist's favorite virtues, gratitude. 
The letter is dated " Convent of Our Lady of Mercy, 
Grass Valley, Nevada County, California, September 
20th, 1868," the eve of St. Matthew. 

* ' To-morrow being the- feast of your holy patron and 
not claimed by any one nearer or dearer than your- 
self, you shall get all my days' doings, good and bad, 
and I trust the former may predominate. It seems to 
me it is unusually long since you wrote, but I believe 
the Retreat season is a busy one with you. It would 
astonish you the number of Retreats your Fathers here 
are called on to conduct. The late Provincial, Father 
Congiati, told us more than once that whatever com- 
munity might be disappointed we never would, and 
you must know we require three, two for the Sisters 
and one for the penitents. You recollect Father 
Raffo ; he gave our first Retreat this year, Father 
Calzia the second, and Father Neri the one for the 
penitents. We say truly the Jesuits are the greatest 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 149 

blessing we enjoy in California. God bless them 
everywhere. 

' t I have given you above my present address in full, 
not that I expect you to send your reply to this place. 
I came here this day three weeks and hope to leave 
this day week. My throat was somehow a little 
troublesome, and the doctor said a short time in this 
pine district would be beneficial, and so it has, thank 
God, both to me and my two companions, Mother 
Mary Gabriel and a young professed Sister who claims 
your holy founder for her patron. This is a real 
primitive country place and we can do here what 
would be unusual elsewhere. For instance, we three, 
and three of the Grass Valley Sisters, went on Monday 
morning after breakfast out at the rear gate at the Boys' 
Asylum and in five minutes found ourselves in a 
primeval pine forest through which we wandered ad lib- 
itum a few hours, resting occasionally and not meeting 
a living creature save a few cows with bells on their 
necks and some birds, lizards, and such like. The 
morning was cloudy, for which reason it was selected, 
as usually at this season the sun is very hot. We 
were not home over an hour when loud rolling thunder 
was heard and plenty of lightning also, soon followed 
by heavy rain, which was welcomed by r every one and 
has made the country sweet and fresh since. 

"Though thirty-four years in California, it is only 
this week I saw a mine. You may be sure we did not 
descend the shafts, but we saw the cages ascending 
and descending with men and rocks, and saw the 
whole process required for getting the gold from first 
to last ; and surely it is no wonder it is valuable, for it 
costs great labor. The process would be too tedious 



150 MARY BAPTIST RUSSKU. 

for me to explain in writing, but truly it is interest- 
ing. Some sad accidents occur. The employed are 
obliged to change their clothes before leaving the 
building, and are examined, fearing they might se- 
crete valuable specimens ; and to the honor of our 
holy Faith it is a fact that never yet did a Catholic 
attempt such a thing, though that cannot be said of 
Cornishmen. Yet the latter get the preference, the 
present proprietors being nearly all Protestants. The 
two mines we visited are the Idaho and North Star ; 
the former goes a perpendicular depth of 1600 feet, 
the latter goes only a depth of 600 feet, but runs 
over 1800 feet, following the ledge of gold-bearing 
quartz. There is in each a machine for forcing fresh 
air into the mine. I am bringing several specimens 
to our cabinet. 

"Now I must tell you about this establishment, 
which was our first filiation. It is twenty-five years 
since it was started, a mere mustard seed ; now it is a 
large institution, including an asylum for orphan and 
half -orphan boys (about eighty-five in number), one 
for young orphan and half- orphan girls, and a third for 
the more grown girls, amongst whom are the children 
of families living in remote districts where no good 
schools are to be found ; the girls in both mount up to 
pretty nearly two hundred. Ground is not so valu- 
able here as in the city, so they are not stinted. It 
would delight you to see the boys chasing each other 
through the pines, or playing ball, etc. The whole 
enclosure of six or seven acres is left free to them. 
The Sisters find it costs less to buy fruit and vege- 
tables than to cultivate them." 

We need not give the rest of the letter except this 






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2 

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PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 151 

phrase : ' ' I was told lately I look as young as I did 
twenty years ago. The truth is I never looked 
young." 

Other California centres of activity for the ubiqui- 
tous and indefatigable Sisters of Mercy have been 
established at Rio Vista, Ukiah, Red Bluff, Eureka, 
Los Angeles and San Diego, but not directly by her 
whom we have called the Pioneer Sister of Mercy in 
California. In San Francisco itself, however, and its 
vicinity she founded several distinct institutions which 
with God's blessing will continue to do each its own 
beneficent work, on through the twentieth century and 
beyond it. It is a blessed thing to have any part in 
the foundation and maintenance of good works of this 
stable and permanent kind. What a magnificent alms 
to suffering humanity ! Such benefactors of their 
fellow- creatures, such co-operators with their merciful 
Creator, must for all eternity have a glorious share in 
the promise, " Their works follow them,'" especially 
w T hen that text is amplified by the dictum of human 
wisdom, Qui facit per alios facit per se. In this sense 
Mother Baptist's work goes on. 

At the request of the Rev. William Gleeson the 
Sisters opened a school at East Oakland (then known 
as Brooklyn) July 2, 1877. Some eight years later an 
addition was built for the accommodation of boarders 
in Our Lady of Lourdes Academy. Here and in 
the other schools there are flourishing Sodalities of the 
Children of Mary, etc. In San Francisco they have 
large schools at St. Peter's, Alabama Street ; Our 
Lady's Home for Aged and Infirm, Rincon Place, 
with some 130 inmates, and adjoining this house 
the Mater Misericordise Institution where young girls 



152. MARY BAPTIST RUSSEUy 

and servants out of employment are taken care of. 
The Magdalen Asylum in Potrero Avenue has saved 
and sanctified many a sorely tried and tempted soul 
through all these years, as it will (please God) 
through each year of the coming century or cen- 
turies. 

From the Mother House itself, St. Mary's Hos- 
pital, the Sisters go out to visit the jails, House of 
Correction, City Hospital, and also the sick of their 
own houses. And besides the blessed routine of these 
organized ministrations of charity they have always 
been ready to lend their aid in meeting sudden em- 
ergencies of disease or want not unknown even in 
that favored region. Thus in a letter of February 6, 
1894, Mother Baptist writes to her sister in Newry: 

" There is great distress among the working classes 
here and everywhere. About five hundred men are 
coming daily for something to eat. We give them 
coffee and bread. We have twelve dozen tin cups ; 
when these are served out they are dipped into a pail 
of water and used again. The poor men stand in the 
open air in a long line, two abreast, and we hand the 
coffee and portion of bread out of the window. It is 
considerable work serving so many, but we are thank- 
ful that we are able to do it. Of course, we get help. 
A poor young man hired a room last week in Third 
Street, and, after cutting off all marks from his clothes 
and destroying all papers and anything that could 
identify him, shot himself, leaving in writing that he 
did it rather than beg, and he could get no employ- 
ment. I trust we may be the means of preventing 
such an act. But workmen and tradesmen are not 
provident ; they spend every cent they earn on dress 



PIONKKR SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 1 53 

and amusements beyond their rank in life ' ' . [And 
then the drink! the drink!] 

The Home for the Aged on Rincon Place did not 
satisfy the zeal of the foundress. Her darling pro- 
ject of a separate and adequately equipped institution 
for this object, on which her heart was set, was never 
to be realized in her lifetime. Her correspondence 
through a full score of years is full of allusions to her 
hopes and plans. For instance, we see in the follow- 
ing letter how far she had gone towards realizing her 
designs as early as the year 1881 ; and this helps 
us to understand her bitter disappointment at not 
being able to begin the building during the many 
years she was still to live. This letter was written to 
a lady who had been obliged to take a situation as a 
governess in a Protestant family in some very out of 
the- way part of the country. As there are some 
characteristic touches in other parts of the letter, we 
print it almost in full. It was a fine act of charity to 
write thus at length to a poor lonely lady among 
strangers, one who seems to have been known to 
Mother Baptist only through having appealed for her 
temporary hospitality while out of employment before 
this undesirable situation was offered to her. 

June 26, 1881. 

My Dear Miss : 

Your big letter was received on the morning ot 
the 23d. I kept it until evening, when M. M. G. 
and I sat down and enjoyed it together. I say 
enjoyed, though we sympathize with you in your hard 
trials, and more than once tears were in Mother's eyes. 
I did not think such bigotry existed, but she tells me it 
is not much better in her part of Humboldt County. It 



154 MARY BAPTIST RUSSKtt 

arises from ignorance, and, when Catholics become more 
numerous, it will gradually disappear. But you have 
found a haven at last. The tender thoughtfulness dis- 
played by placing all the Catholic books and pictures in 
your room was the only point that touched the soft spot 
in my heart. I pray God to bless your newly found 
friends. What inducement have people to settle in such 
a country as you describe, or how did they find out such 
a place ? Truly this puzzles me. 

Your description of your horseback ride adventures 
reminded me of myself. My dear old father (the Lord be 
merciful to him!) considered riding a part of our neces- 
sary training, and when mere children we began on a 
donkey, but I never had courage to go farther ; so when 
the other girls were sporting on horseback, the quiet 
donkey did for me, and the quieter he went the better I 
was pleased, as I always had a book open before me. At 
last one day the poor brute got tired of my listlessness, 
and down it lay and I on its back. My poor father 
saw me in the distance, and when I got home said he 
supposed I had better give up riding, and so I did, and 
I am sure I would make a greater fuss than you did if 
obliged now to try it. 

You say little of your eyes. I am so glad that you 
have so kind an amanuensis as Miss G. It will be one of 
.the most improving exercises you can prescribe, so beg 
her to write as often as she can, and it will save your 
poor eyes. We did wonder we were not hearing from 
you. I hope you got the few letters we sent. 

You will be glad to hear Sister M. Francis is busy 
about the new home ; not exactly the building, but pre 
paring the ground and the plans. She has over thirty- 
men grading for over six weeks, and probably six more 
will not see all finished. 

We are rejoicing at one great blessing God has accorded 
her — a good well. Two weeks ago the men struck a good 



PIONF^R SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 1 55 

vein of water at 136 feet depth. All the money you send 
I will lay up to secure you a home in the new building, 
so that you will feel independent. I often told you we did 
not hold you accountable for the time that you were here, 
except that you are bound to pray fervently for God's 
blessing on us all. 

When there are so few Catholics in your part of the 
world, you have, of course, no priest and no sacrifice. 
How I pity you! But God is everywhere, and you are 
doing what seems to be your duty in the order of Provi- 
dence. I will hereafter send you a Monitor as often as I 
can, or some Catholic paper. I see you get other papers 
with political news. 

No mention is made in my family letters of my 
brother's being made successor to Forster, but unless it 
was a certainty they would not mention such a thing. 
I am far indeed from wishing it for him ; but, as God 
elevated Esther to the throne for the good of others and 
not for her own benefit, so it may be the Divine Will to 
make use of my poor brother for some wise end, and if so, 
provided he is true to God, all will go well. So far, 
mixing with the world has not lessened his fidelity to his 
religious duties, thank God! but pray for him. He is 
only 49 this October, and he has ten children. 

Now I have dashed this off in double quick time, so 
your dear pupils must not take this as a pattern to 
imitate. 

Ever yours in Jesus Christ, 

Sr. M. B. RussKivL, 

Sister of Mercy. 

The ground, however, on which Mother Mary Francis 
Benson had those men employed for six weeks was for 
some reason pronounced unsuitable for the site of the 
new Home, though some progress seems to have been 



156 MARY BAPTIST RUSSKlX 

made, for in the following year (April 13, 1882) 
Mother Baptist writes to the same correspondent : 

' ' The work on the new Home is stopped for lack ot 
fnnds. In God's own time it will get on. " 

But God seems sometimes to our impatience and 
ignorance to work very slowly, and, when eleven 
years had gone by, Mother Baptist wrote to her 
sister, Mother Emmanuel, August 2, 1893 : 

"I told you some time ago about a lovely spot we had 
set our hearts on for the Home, Peralta Park. Well, the 
Archbishop did not approve of it, so we gave it up. The 
location was grand — such a fine view of the bay, Golden 
Gate, Verba Buena and Alcatras Islands, etc. , etc. This 
very thing, however, was objectionable, as it thus gets 
the full benefit of the winds and fogs ; but it so happened 
that we went on an exceptionally lovely day. We have 
since bought five acres in Fruitvale, a suburb of East Oak- 
land, and intend, please God, to build there in time. Our 
reasons for selecting this place are, first, the climate, 
which is mild, and, secondly and principally, we are 
within a few hundred feet of a church belonging to the 
Franciscan Fathers, where our old people can have the 
advantage of numberless Novenas and devotions of all 
kinds. Besides, religious priests are usually more numer- 
ous than secular priests, so we are not likely to have any 
difficulty about securing daily Mass, paying a certain 
amount annually, of course. Until we dispose of the 
property we purchased so long ago for the Home in this 
city, we cannot think of building, and at present every- 
thing here is not dull, but dead. Crowds of people are 
out of employment, and several of the banks are closed. " 

Again, after more than two years, she writes to the 
compiler of these notes, December 7, 1895 : 

' ' Business of every kind is depressed and taxes are 
extra heavy ; so, contrary to our expectations, we are 



PIONKKR SISTKR OF MKRCY IN CALIFORNIA. 157 

getting no contributions to the Building Fund of the new 
Home. We are consequently resting on our oars for the 
present. When I hear of the amount expended for use- 
less decorations, as at young Mackay's funeral and at 
Miss Vanderbilt's wedding, I am half provoked. At the 
last 120,000 dollars' worth of cut flowers. It is almost 
incredible, but even here 500 dollars for a pall of violets 
has been paid more than once. We are in Calafornia 41 
years to-morrow, Feast of the Immaculate Conception, 
and the day Pius IX proclaimed it a dogma of our 
Faith. Dear old Mother de Sales threw a miraculous 
medal into the mud as we drove from the steamer to St. 
Patrick's Church and begged our Blessed Lady to take 
us under her protection ; and no doubt she preserved us 
from many dangers, notwithstanding our shortcomings. 
Ask her to help us now to finish the Home ; it is too long 
on the Hospital premises for the good of either institu- 
tion, and I could wish (if God's will) to see the new and 
permanent building erected before I retire from work, 
and you know my years cannot be many. So, pray, and 
God bless you." 

We have given considerable space to this holy pro- 
ject which has not even yet been realized ; because it 
claimed a large share of the prayers, hopes and aspi- 
rations of many of Mother Baptist's late years. She 
loved the old people, no matter how disagreeable they 
were or how crotchety. She always found excuses 
for them, and whenever she had time, she visited 
them and read for them. The notes that we are here 
following add that she never worried over money 
matters, and always said that God would provide for 
His own ; and so He did. She had such faith in pub- 
lic prayers or prayers in common that she never 
missed an opportunity of being present at the comma- 



158 MARY BAPTIST RUSSEIX 

nity exercises. " The only thing for which I ever 
heard her express regret (says one of her Sisters) was 
for not being able to build the Home." 

Our last reference to this subject will be a note 
furnished by another of the Sisters, from which we 
will not omit the opening sentences, although they are 
here irrelevant : 

" Being asked on what she made her particular 
examen, she answered, ' On the presence of God ; 
Father Maraschi, S. J., told me to make it on this 
twenty years ago.' God was indeed present with her 
at all times and in all places. In her exterior devo- 
tions nothing out of the ordinary was apparent. She 
always looked on the call of duty as God's voice, and 
it became her prayer. Nothing could disturb her 
peace of mind, for she had implicit confidence in 
Divine Providence ; every occurrence, pleasant or un- 
pleasant, was gratefully received and treasured because 
it was His will. How she did long to see the Home 
for Old People erected ! For years she had been 
planning, etc., about it. A few years ago she pur- 
chased a very large ' Crucifixion ' and several other 
pictures to help on a poor artist — also a stained-glass 
window, to assist another poor artist ; and all these 
and many more things she had stored away to adorn 
the chapel of this Home. Never will I forget the ex- 
pression on her face the day (a few days after she was 
stricken down with her last illness) that the Arch- 
bishop visited her. He had promised some time before 
to call and come to some decision about proceeding 
with the building. She had been daily expecting him. 
Her speech was gone, but she was perfectly con- 
scious and showed how pleased she was to see him ; 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 1 59 

but I imagined I could read in her face, ! Ah, you 
come too late. I cannot talk with you now.' After 
he left the room, she raised her hands upw r ard and 
with her eyes expressed perfect resignation." 

The last work of the kind that the foundress of the 
Sisters of Mercy in California was just barely allowed 
to finish was St. Hilary's Sanitarium. The well-being 
of this w T retched tenement of clay, which the soul 
inhabits, has a marvellous share in the efficiency of 
God's poor human creatures. Mother Baptist had for 
many years felt the necessity of having a place outside 
the city, and yet easily accessible, to which she might 
send the Sisters that needed a few days' rest and 
change of air after their long confinement in the hos- 
pital wards and closely-packed schoolrooms. Dr. 
Benjamin L,yford, a distinguished physician, w 7 ho had 
for some years given up the practice of his profession, 
owned an extensive estate in Marin County, along the 
shore of an inlet of San Francisco Bay, from which he 
generously invited Mother Baptist to select a portion 
suited for her purpose. He even pressed her to come 
at once (it w 7 as the summer of 1897) and occupy w 7 ith 
some of the Sisters one of his cottages, so that she 
might on the spot judge of the climate, etc., and might 
then, if satisfied, choose her own lot, w r hich he would 
give for nothing. Accordingly she writes to Sister 
Mary Euphrasia from Bay View Cottage an idyllic 
epistle, reporting that "Sister M. B. is enraptured 
with this place, and truly for a summer resort for the 
Sisters, I doubt if it could be equalled. Not a sound 
but a cawing of the crows morning and evening. 
Yesterday a rabbit or a hare came into the kitchen, 
and, as we w T ere sitting in the front last evening, a 



l6o MARY BAPTIST RUSSKU, 

whole family of quail walked down the road within 
fifty feet of us. If we were only any way smart, we 
could trap plenty of game while here." It is a quiet 
retired spot, free from fog and malaria, the air balmy 
and yet invigorating. It commands a magnificent 
view of the bay with San Francisco in the distance. 
Mother Baptist commenced a comfortable little con- 
vent, which she called St. Hilary's, because "Hilarita" 
was Mrs. Ly ford's name. Mr. Gilmour, the con- 
tractor for the work, was a Protestant ; but before his 
contract was completed, he had expressed a desire to 
be instructed in the Catholic faith and is now a good 
practical Catholic. Let us pray that the same grace 
may be granted to the generous donor of St. Hilary's. 

Sister Rose writes on the 20th of November, 1898 : 
" Just think ! After all Mother Baptist's preparation 
of the new house she never slept one night in it." 
When all was ready the message came from a brighter 
and a fairer home : Omnia parata sunt, vent ad nuptias. 
After she was taken away, her mourning daughters 
were in no hurry about the blessing of St. Hilary's, 
which did not take place till May 13, 1899. Father 
Valentini, the Rector of Sausalito, recalled in his 
sermon that thirty years before he had met Mother 
Baptist in the pest house, where she and Sister Mary 
Stanislaus and others, all gone to their reward, were 
nursing the smallpox patients, and he exhorted the 
listeners, her spiritual children, to strive to copy her 
virtues, especially her charity, her humility, her zeal, 
her peaceful calm, her meekness and forgivingness, 
and her firm trust in Divine Providence. 

We must now begin to think of bringing our story 
to an end, though we have made very inadequate use 




OLD WOMEN'S IIOMK, SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. 



PIONEKR SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 161 

of the materials placed at our disposal. Besides the 
long European letters, we have had the privilege of 
reading many of the shorter and more scrappy and 
gossipy notes that were sent from one to another of 
the houses in California. In all these the writer's 
prudence and charity shine forth, her kindness and 
thoughtfulness, her desire to help every one who 
needed help of any kind. 

Her habit of commending her friends' necessities to 
the compassionate heart of the Mother of Sorrows is 
thus referred to in a letter to a friend in Ireland. She 
writes : — "It may please you to know that one of my 
constant practices is to recommend all my dear ones to 
our L,ady of Dolours earnestly every day, and gener- 
ally by name ; and certainly you and yours are never 
forgotten. We have a life-size painting of the Cruci- 
fixion over our altar, with our Blessed Lady and St. 
John. The Madonna is very beautiful, and it is to 
her specially I pray for you all, and for some other 
anxious mothers, whom I promised to pray for." 

The following is a testimony paid by one of the 
Californian Sisters of Mercy to the virtues of her 
beloved Mother : 

1 ' Her knowledge of Scripture and of the L,ives of 
the Saints, and indeed all her spiritual knowledge was 
very great. Her instructions were exceedingly practical 
and it is certain she always practised what she 
preached. She was generally one of the first in the 
Chapel in the morning and one of the last to 
leave it at night. When duty or charity did not 
detain her she was without fail at all the common 
exercises of the community. I never heard her say, 
' I had not time to finish my prayers ; ' they were 



1 62 MARY BAPTIST RTJSSKU, 

always said at the right time. Her spirit of prayer 
was wonderful ; she lived and moved in and for God. 
It required no effort for her to speak of Him ; she 
seemed always recollected. 

"In 1 88 1 we celebrated the Golden Jubilee of the 
Order. Early in that year she wrote to the different 
houses of the order for statistics of the different houses, 
of their works, members, etc. She intended having 
them all collected and had printed headings of the 
different works of the Institute. These she intended 
to be collected and bound and to send a copy to the 
parent house, Baggot Street, Dublin, and also to the 
principal houses of the Order. 

' ' Mother was willing to bear all the expense and 
take all the trouble solely for the good of the Order. 
She loved everything connected with it and revered 
the Institute. She was in every sense a true Sister 
of Mercy. 

* ' Her respect for priests was profound ; many a 
needy one she helped substantially. She always spoke 
of and to them witii reverence. She never resented 
an injury, nor would she ever allude to a slight that 
she had received. She possessed a spirit of labor ; no 
work was too menial for her. I often saw her scrub, 
wash windows and help those who seemed extra busy. 
I never heard her command ; if she wanted something 
done or wished one to go on the visitation, it was, 
' Could you do so and so for me ? ' or ' Would it be 
convenient for you to come out with me ? ' etc. 

"Many a time she called the writer and whispered, 
1 The Iyord loveth the cheerful giver/ if she would see 
in the face a shade of worry or perhaps a clouded 
brow or a slight frown. How she pitied the relapsing 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 163 

sinner or the one who failed despite many resolutions ! 
Her advice was, ' Rise again no matter how often you 
fall.' ' If a child in running falls, it does not lie on 
the ground, but arises quickly and goes on again until 
it reaches its destination. So we must do likewise,' 
she frequently said. 

"When she did a kindness for anyone, or helped 
one in any way, she would never mention it, nor 
would she wish any one to allude to it. To the poor 
she was more than generous, especially to those who 
had seen better days. To such her offering was 
always placed in an envelope, which she w r ould slip 
into their hands when saying ' Good-bye,' showing 
the refinement of her generous heart. She frequently 
said that God never let her feel the loss of the chari- 
ties she dispensed ; and these w r ere incessant and (con- 
sidering her resources and her needs) very great. She 
could not refuse any one who asked her for charity, or 
see any one needing food, clothing, etc. She would 
deprive herself of necessaries. On many occasions 
she took off her underskirt to give it to some poor 
creature, and she would take from her wardrobe the 
garments meant for her use. No matter how badly 
any one treated her or how ungrateful persons were, 
she never resented nor spoke ill of them ; in fact, I 
never heard her speak in the least uncharitably of 
any one, nor show 7 by her manner that she resented. 
All did not act tow T ards her as she did to them. Rev. 
Mother was always planning pleasures for her spirit- 
ual children. She was always anxious to relieve and 
to make their occupations light. She never asked 
any one to do what she w 7 as not most willing to per- 
form herself. I never heard her express a wish that 



1 64 MARY BAPTIST RUSSELL 

she would like this or that with regard to food, cloth- 
ing, etc. Very many times I asked her when she was 
ailing at any time if there was not something she 
would desire. ' No, dear, I have everything I wish.' 
I often said : ' Why, Mother, you will spoil those 
who attend to your wants. You never give an order ; 
you do not tell them to make your bed so and so.' 
She would answer, with an endearing smile : ' How 
can I, when everything is done so willingly and well? ' 
Yes, she thought every one was good, like herself. 
She often said that we ought to feel a pleasure in 
being forgotten or overlooked by others. She never 
raised her voice ; her tone in speaking was low but 
very distinct. Her manner of reading was charming ; 
one would never tire listening. In reading of the 
sufferings of others she would always shed tears. 
Many a time when she would commence some touch- 
ing part I would say, ' Now, Rev. Mother, please take 
out your handkerchief to catch the tears/ 
She loved Ireland with a deep, ardent and undying 
love." 



CHAPTER XIII. 

LAST ILLNESS AND DEATH. 

And now for the great act of dying. Death did 
not come as an abrupt surprise for our Pioneer Sister 
of Mercy in California. Every day of her life, we 
might say truly, had been not only implicitly, but 
explicitly, a preparation for death. Her letters are 
full of allusions to death ; nothing austere or melan- 
choly, but very cheerful, though very serious. She 
made herself at home with the thought of death : for, 
like the " Great Good Man" of Coleridge's fifteen- 
line sonnet, she had 

11 three treasures, life and light 

And calm thoughts equable as infant's breath, 
And three fast friends, surer than day or night, 
Herself, her Maker, and the Angel Death. " 

In Mother Baptist's letters there are many des- 
criptions of death-beds of various Sisters, some details 
of which have a pathetic interest for those who know 
what her own death was to be. 

When some of the community were proposing plans 
for a certain Sister's Silver Jubilee, still at some dis- 
tance in the future, their Reverend Mother wrote 
what might have been written of herself nine years 

165 



1 66 MARY BAPTIST RTTSSKUv 

after : ' * Certainly we will do every thing in our power 
to honor the day when it comes ; but who can tell 
how many of us will then be in the land of the living ? 
L,et us learn a lesson from our poor dear Sister now 
lying in the infirmary. (She began her letter by say- 
ing, "Our dear, kind-hearted, devoted Sister Mary 
Agnes is to all appearances near death.") Not a 
prayer can she say, not a look can she cast on her 
crucifix. Even when Father Prelato called and tried 
to rouse her to consciousness, she could give no sign 
that she had even heard him, though it is possible 
she may know what is going on. She has not opened 
her eyes since she was anointed. It is indeed little 
we can do when dying. I will send you a few lines 
each day as long as she is in this precarious state. ' ' 

June 5, 1888, was the Golden Jubilee of Sister Mary 
Bernard Hamill, the fiftieth anniversary of her profes- 
sion in St. Clare's Convent, Newry. Writing to her 
before that epoch, her god-child says : " The year 
1 901, if I ever see it, will be my Golden Jubilee. But 
I don't expect to live so long, nor do I wish it, either ; 
in fact, I wish for nothing, knowing that the very 
thing I might be naturally inclined to desire may be 
the least desirable for me, so I have no wishes what- 
ever, except to be a good religious, and for that 
I beg your prayers always. May God graciously 
hear all the prayers offered for you on your Golden 
Jubilee, and may eternity be for you one long jubilee 
of love and praise." 

Writing in anticipation of another Golden Jubilee — 
that of Mother Gertrude, of Kinsale — she refers to her 
own. "You know I will be fifty years in religion 
next November, if I live so long. Dear Mother 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 1 67 

Gabriel and others wanted me to celebrate my Golden 
Jubilee then, but I objected. I think they feared I 
might not live for my jubilee of profession ; but if I 
do not, I will, please God, be sooner in heaven. 
Though life is precarious, and I am perfectly indiffer- 
ent on that point, I am inclined to think I will see 
August 2, 1 901, which will be my Golden Jubilee." 

This long letter, which we have not yet done with, 
ends with these words : " And now, once more, fare- 
well, my ever dear Sister, until we meet in the ever- 
lasting jubilee of heaven." A strange expression 
coming after her allusion to the year 1901 ; but it was 
nearer the truth, for she was stricken down two or 
three weeks afterwards, and this seems to be the very 
last of her letters. This circumstance adds solemnity 
to the frequent references which it makes to death. 
11 I intend sending you a sketch of our cemetery with 
the names of all our dear departed. Our dead form a 
goodly company. 

1 ' It seems to me we lose more in proportion to our 
number than any community I know — forty-five in 
not quite forty-four years — and the climate is good, 
proverbially pleasant, and we give them good food and 
plenty of it ; but the doctors have many times said 
that the air breathed in the schools, home and hospital 
was not the best, as we know very well ; but we 
rejoice at having now a quiet little spot by the seaside, 
where we can spend a week or two in turn during 
vacation, and have salt-water baths. I enjoyed it so 
myself in the early part of last summer ; but, as I got 
some serious or rather alarming attacks in the fall, 
no one will hear of my venturing near the water 
again." 



1 68 MARY BAPTIST RUSSKUv 

Later on, in this same letter, she adds : 

' ' One of the Sisters, seeing the dead the chief sub- 
ject of my letter, remarked that it was scarcely a 
suitable subject for a jubilee letter, but I know you 
are like myself, thinking more of the dead than of the 
living, and among our dead are some very dear to 
you, so I think you will not object to all I have said. 

' ' I must tell you about myself. I do not know 
whether you heard of the rather alarming attacks I 
had many times last fall and winter. They have 
almost disappeared, and, as I sleep well, eat well and 
am not allowed to do much, I am getting fat ; but that 
does not make long life any more certain, as we see 
day after day; so I must try to be prepared, 
should God call me out of life suddenly. I therefore 
recommend myself earnestly to your prayers, and, as 
you are naturally expecting your summons before long, 
I will not fail to recommend you often to St. Joseph, 
the patron of a holy death. In our infirmary at the 
asylum we have a picture of that saint, with Our Lord 
on one side, and the Blessed Virgin on the other. 
No wonder he is invoked for that great and supreme 
blessing of a happy death. 

"The last Sister we lost, Sister Mary Cecilia, was 
not long ill, about ten days, but very sick from the 
first. It was that fatal pneumonia that carried her 
off. When scarcely able to articulate^ I could hear 
her repeating, though half raving : 

" 'O Mary, when I come to die, 

Be thou, thy spouse and Jesus nigh.' 

" Indeed, all our dear departed had enviable deaths, 
thank God ! I love to reflect on some of them, they 
were so especially holy and edifying." 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 1 69 

What we may call Mother Baptist's special devotion 
to death was shown, most of all perhaps, in some let- 
ters addressed to her half-brother, Arthur Hamill, of 
whom mention was made tbwards the beginning of this 
sketch. He, himself, was very faithful to the memory 
of his deceased kindred and friends. When his 
youngest brother became a priest he would often say 
to him, " Remember the dead ; M and, when All Souls' 
Day came round, he would draw up each year a list of 
those whom he wished to be commemorated at the 
altar. When he in his turn was lying on his death-bed 
his sister wrote of him, July 27, 1884 : 

' ' Why should we desire to retard his happy en- 
trance to the kingdom of God ? He has had a long 
life, being seventy last Aprils and has, I trust, earned 
for himself a happy eternity. Often since I saw some- 
thing of the world I have reflected with admiration on 
what I recollect of Arthur, his wonderful respect and 
submission to mamma, his devotedness to us young 
ones, and the repeated journeys he took on Saturdays 
from Dundalk merely to spend the Sunday with us in 
our quiet old-fashioned home in Killowen, instead of 
enjoying himself with young people of his own age." 
Judge Hamill lingered so long that more than a year 
later Mother Baptist wrote the following letter, a 
strange one to send to a man of the world so much 
older than herself, that he had been appointed the 
guardian of her and her brothers and sisters on their 
father's death. 

St. Mary's Hospital, 
San Francisco, October 25, 1885. 
My Dearest Arthur : — At first I thought I would not 
bother you with a letter, and so addressed dear Mary, 



170 MARY BAPTIST RUSSKUv 

who will, I know, write to me in return ; but now I am 
adding a few lines to yourself. 

So death has sent you " three warnings" that he will 
call for you some day. Please God, you will not be 
found unprepared, and so you do not dread his approach. 
I met some time ago a few sweet lines on death which I 
would copy, could I now lay my hands on them ; but the 
substance was that we should welcome death as an angel ; 
for he alone shows us that man is immortal, the soul can 
never die. Still, being the penalty of sin, there is a cer- 
tain solemnity about death that makes us naturally 
shrink from it, and it is this very fact that makes so 
pleasing to God our entire conformity to His holy will. 
Like every one, you feel, too, having to be separated from 
those you love ; but this separation is only for a time. 
We will all, please God, be reunited in eternity. You 
willingly allowed Mary and the girls to go to Germany, 
etc,, etc., believing it was for their happiness and benefit, 
and looking forward to the pleasure of meeting them 
again. In like manner you and they must rather antici- 
pate the happiness of being reunited in a blessed eternity 
than dwell on the necessary separation in time. You 
used to have rather too stringent ideas of the preparation 
required for Holy Communion, but you must lay that 
view aside and avail yourself of every opportunity ot 
receiving Holy Communion and dwell, not so much on 
the infinite justice and sanctity of Our Divine Lord as on 
His infinite mercy and love. You have great advantages, 
dear Arthur, in such a city as Dublin, with dear Mary 
and Matthew to urge you on in the path of sanctity, and 
so many grateful, loving hearts praying for you contin- 
ually. You won't object to my alluding thus to your 
death, though you are better, thank God, at present, and 
may be spared a few years. Yet, at your age, we know it 
must be only a few ; and, as death is the only means by 




ARTHUR HAMILL, Q.C. 



PIONEKR SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 171 

which we can be united to God, never again to be sepa- 
rated, we should not shrink from it. [After some remarks 
of a less grave kind, she ends thus] : Another time I 
will write more, provided you are not ?nad with me for 
this production. I fear dear Mary will, but I am so 
familiar with death, I half imagine you must be the same. 
I pray for you every day, and I promise to pray for you 
more and more. I must now stop. Ever, dearest Arthur, 
your fondly attached and affectionate sister, 

Mary B. Russell, 
Sister of Mercy. 

Mother Baptist, before posting this letter, showed 
it to an aged kinswoman whom she cherished tenderly 
in her last days. " She says it was a terrible letter to 
send to a sick man, so I added a postscript, telling her 
to use her own judgment about giving it or not. We 
are so habituated to the thought of death that it has 
lost its terror for us ; but, as cousin Kate says, it is 
different with seculars." 

Ten years before, she had given a description of the 
little cemetery where she was herself to be buried, in 
the course of a letter of eight huge foolscap pages to 
"My dear Arthur and Mary," dated February 8, 
1874. After speaking of two deceased friends she 
goes on : ' ' May God have mercy on them all ! Is it 
in Glasnevin you have your.two darlings laid? It is 
nicely kept ; but the poor old graveyard in Newry, 
though a sanctified spot, w 7 as desolate-looking in the 
extreme. Here the cemeteries are laid out with walks 
and trees, and are cheerful-looking ; but in general 
there is too much gingerbread-show about the tombs, 
etc., for my taste. I wish you could see our sweet 
little cemetery ; it is at the Magdalen Asylum where 



172 MARY BAPTIST RUSSEU. 

we have seven acres of ground. We keep the ceme- 
tery green by constant irrigation ; without this it 
would be parched by the long dry seasons and fresh 
breezes that keep our summers so cool. We have 
eight sisters already laid in their narrow homes and 
four or five of the penitents. They have one-half ap- 
propriated to themselves, but only those who make 
their consecration for life are buried there ; the others 
are interred in the common cemetery. We have in it 
a small mortuary chapel in which some of the peni- 
tents say the Office for the Dead on the first Sunday 
in each month and in which is a mock coffin with a 
skeleton (drawing), on top, appropriate pictures and 
mottoes, as the dead Christ, death of St. Joseph and 
St. Patrick. All these little things help and interest 
the inmates whose world is limited by the enclosure 
and for whom we have to provide every little comfort 
in our power. You would wonder how holy some 
of them are, but of course it is the smallest 
number." 

Iyike very many of the saints and others whom God 
has asked to do great works for Him, Mary Baptist 
Russell was blessed with a very robust constitution. 
She had hardly the slightest interruption from ill- 
health till the last two years of her life. As far back, 
however, as December, 1888, she writes to her sister : 
" I fear Sister Mary Francis's letter may make you 
more or less anxious about my health ; so I will tell 
you I have since had an examination, and it is found 
that the first opinion given by the doctor was not cor- 
rect. My case is not so serious as he feared, and in 
the course of a month or so I will, please God, be all 
right. But he keeps me lying either on a lounge or 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 1 73 

in bed, and has ordered me lots of good things to take, 
even meat on Fridays ! So my day has come. ' ' 

But her day of life lasted ten years more. On the 
17th of January, 1898, she reports of herself: "At 
present I am very well ; but, as those attacks have 
come back unexpectedly, I cannot say I am all right. 
If it be God's will, I should like much to build the 
Home next summer. Pray for this intention." And 
ten days later : "I shall be sixty-nine in April. My 
health has been shaky all last year, and I may say I 
did nothing during that time but rest and nurse my- 
self. Now, thank God, I feel well, and hope to con- 
tinue so for a few years with the blessing of God.' ' 
As near to the end as June 28, 1898, she writes to a 
friend : " You will be glad, I know, to hear that my 
health is as good as it was years ago." No letter of 
a later date than this has come- into our hands. Her 
last letter home to her sister, Mother Emmanuel of 
Newry, is dated June 7, 1898 : c< Mother Austin Car- 
roll says she has not one delicate Sister in her com- 
munity of sixty ! I envy her. We have many, and 
I head the list ; but I am not suffering in any way. 
Yet, without any premonitory symptoms, I lose for an 
instant the power of my right side ; and, as long as I 
am subject to such attacks I can't say I am zvell. Still 
I am stouter than ever, and no wonder — for I sleep 
well, eat well, and cannot go around as much as for- 
merly. These symptoms ceased for several months, 
but have returned of late, though I still follow the 
doctor's regimen." The last words of this last letter 
are, "I am glad Mr. Fegan has acted so nobly" — 
namely, in giving at his sole expense to the Sisters of 
Mercy in Newry, such a Home for the Aged as Mother 



174 MARY BAPTIST RUSSEU, 

Baptist had for years desired in San Francisco. How- 
ever, I find that these last words are followed by a 
postscript which ends thus : ' ' How grand the work- 
houses are getting ! Nothing will do them but 
trained and certificated nurses. The world is chang- 
ing ; it must be coming to an end." 

It was coming to an end for her. In July letters 
reached her friends in Ireland, which made her loving 
sister write thus: "I fear they expect her death. 
Well, she has served God and loved Him all her life, 
and we must not wish to keep her from her reward. 
We must bless and praise God for the great graces He 
has granted her through life ; and He will surround 
her death-bed with them too. He is so good and gen- 
erous to His faithful servants." 

Sister Columba, after announcing Mother Baptist's 
dangerous state, exclaims : " What shall we do if the 
good God takes her ? I cannot imagine this House 
and Community without her : she is its heart and its 
life. She was always ready to help us and make 
everything light and pleasant : and oh ! her charity 
was really boundless. Her right hand did not know 
what her left hand did. No one ever saw her angry 
or impatient — always willing to forgive, no matter 
how often one had offended. Indeed, she was a faith- 
ful copy of our mild and loving Jesus.. She lived and 
moved in and for God. Her charity and sympathy 
for the poor were unbounded. She always helped 
every one who applied to her. Her very last direction 
to me was to send some money to a leper settlement in 
Japan." 

Another of her community (Sister Mary Aquin) 
writes on the 28th July, while they were still expect- 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 1 75 

ing her death : " We have prayed hard that God 
would leave her with us a few years longer ; but He 
wants her, and we must submit, however hard it may 
be to our poor hearts. She was a perfect model of 
every Christian virtue, but, above all, charity in word 
and deed. Her tongue, now silent forever in this 
world, never wounded any one, but was always ready 
to pour the balm of consolation into the wounded 
heart. How the poor will miss her ! God alone 
knows what she has been to them during her long 
useful life." And two days later Mother Columba, 
her assistant then and soon to be her successor, sends 
her report to Mother Emmanuel : " Our dear Mother 
is still with us, but each day growing weaker. Her 
eyes are dark to this world. Ah ! how much bright- 
ness she will gaze on for all eternity ! She cannot see 
for the past few days. It is so sad not to hear her 
voice ; and to know that she cannot hear us is inex- 
pressibly sad." 

Those lines of an anonymous American poem on the 
death of St. John the Evangelist were pathetically 
verified in the death-bed at which we are kneeling in 
spirit : 

" E 'en my lips 
Refuse to form the words my heart sends forth, 
My ears are dull ; they scarcely hear the sobs 
Of my dear children gathered round my couch. ; 
My eyes so dim they cannot see the tears. " 

Not blind only, but dumb and deaf, the senses one 
after the other being dulled by that clogging of the 
arteries of the brain which was the immediate cause of 
death. Dumb and deaf and blind to creatures and to 
all outward things ; but in her inmost heart, through 



176 MARY BAPTIST RUSSEIX 

all those silent hours, doubtless the holy strain went 
on which had gone on uninterruptedly from her earli- 
est conscious life and which will need little change in 
heaven. " God's will be done! My Jesus, mercy! 
My God, I love thee ! Thanks be to God ! " 

And so with all the graces and consolations, sacra- 
mental and unsacramental, that can strengthen and 
gladden the last hours of a true Christian and a fervent 
religious, the dying nun passed through her tedious 
but seemingly painless dissolution. " Five weeks (all 
but one day) of living death." The great change 
came about seven o'clock in the evening of August 
5th, and many of the Sisters stayed with her, praying ; 
but she lingered through the night. A Dominican 
Father, who was a patient in the hospital, gave her 
the last absolution and said the prayers for the dying 
on his way to the altar to offer up Mass for her. He 
must have been in doubt whether her place was in the 
Memento of the Living or in the Memento of the 
Dead. Perhaps she died between the two and shared 
in both, for the soul passed away peacefully about 
twenty minutes after six o'clock in the morning of the 
Feast of the Transfiguration, August 6th, 1898, which 
was the seventieth year of her life on earth and the 
fiftieth of her life in the religious state. May she rest 
in peace, and may my last end be like to hers ! 

All the public journals of San Francisco, when 
Mother Baptist's illness showed fatal symptoms, gave 
minute accounts of her- condition day by day, as of one 
in whom all their readers were interested. The an- 
nouncement of her death in The San Francisco Call, 
begins with these words : 

" No death in recent years has been heard of with 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 1 77 

greater regret in this community than that of Mother 
Superior, Mary Baptist Russell, the sweet woman who 
watched over the destinies of various charitable insti- 
tutions in this city during the past half century. The 
tidings of her calm leave-taking of this life will fill 
with sorrow the thousands who were fortunate enough 
to meet her and those who have heard or read of her 
beautiful deeds of charity since her advent in this State. 
A more lovable character than hers has been rarety 
found. Her constant aim in life has been to uplift 
the suffering and the wounded, and in this she was 
entirely successful. ' ' 

The other secular journals, also, The Chronicle, 
The Exajniner, etc., and, of course, the Catholic 
organ, The San Francisco Monitor, devoted several 
columns to a minute and enthusiastic appreciation of 
the life and labors of the humble religious. From 
Saturday to Tuesday thousands visited the convent 
chapel where she now lay in death, and where in life 
she had offered up so many holy prayers, made so 
many fervent Communions, and assisted with vivid 
faith and tender piety at so many Masses, often two or 
three in succession, even in the failing health of her 
last two years. It was remarked by many, that in her 
coffin she looked thirty years younger than she was. 
" The throng was so great," writes one of the nuns, 
' ' that we were really frightened — at least / was ! ' ' 
Hundreds touched the precious remains with medals, 
crosses, etc. The scene might remind us of what w T e 
read of many of the saints, among populations more 
impressionable than the shrewd and worldly inhabi- 
tants of an American commercial city like the metrop- 
olis of the West. 



1 78 MARY BAPTIST RUSSEIX 

On the day of the funeral, the Archbishop of San 
Francisco, Dr. P. W. Riordan, celebrated the solemn 
Requiem Mass in the presence of some fifty of his 
priests, and as many of his people as the convent chapel 
could contain, not one-tenth of the crowds that sought 
admittance. Two hours before the obsequies it was 
impossible to get near the chapel. 

" No dead sovereign/' said The San Francisco Chron- 
icle (a non Catholic journal), " ever had prouder burial 
than Mother Mary Baptist Russell, whose life of self- 
denial and good works has crowned her in a city's 
memory." 

The farewell words were spoken by the Rev. Hugh 
Gallagher, S.J., nephew of the good priest who had 
conducted her to the distant sphere of her labors fifty 
years before. Her body was then borne to the ceme- 
tery attached to her beloved Magdalen Asylum, 
amidst a crowd that (according to the journalist last 
quoted) " swelled to such immense proportions that 
the utmost efforts of the police were barely sufficient 
to hold it in restraint." An eye-witness states that, 
when the burial rites were finished, and the crowds 
had melted away, many still lingered on, more in- 
clined to pray to than for the departed ; and persons 
of all creeds (this circumstance is mentioned express^) 
and of different degrees of social standing carried home 
with them handfuls of clay from the newly-made 
grave. 

The spot in which that grave was made has been 
lovingly described for us by Mother Baptist herself, in 
a letter printed in a previous page. St. Michael's 
cemetery had always been a favorite haunt of hers, 
ever since it was blessed, May 8, 1867. The large 




MEMORIAL CROSS, ST. MICHAEL'S CEMETERY. 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 1 79 

Celtic cross, which, she had long wished to erect 
as the crowning consecration of that little garden of 
graves, has been erected since her death, as a special 
memorial of the Foundress, and bears this inscription : 
" In Memory of Mother M. B. Russell, First Superior 
of the Sisters of Mercy, San Francisco. Born April 
18, 1829. Entered Religion November 24, i£ 
Professed August 2, 1851. Died August 6, li 
Lower down above the base of the monument is this 
text from Proverbs xxxi., 20: "She has opened her 
hand to the needy and has stretched out her hands to 
the poor." A good text surely to place over our 
"valiant woman," who not only opened her right 
hand to give alms to those in want, but who, when 
the sick and suffering presented themselves, stretched 
out both her hands, opened w T ide her arms to embrace 
them, to cherish them, to nurse them back to health, 
while using a quiet and prudent zeal for the health of 
their souls. 

Perhaps Mother Baptist's memorial cross might have 
borne a second text alluding to her other overmaster- 
ing passion, supernatural love for little children, es- 
pecially when poor and destitute. A saint, whose 
name she bore from the baptismal font — though I 
think she looked more to St. Catherine of Siena, as her 
patron — St. Catherine, of Genoa, complained once to 
her Divine Spouse: " Lord, You bid me to love 
others, and I can love only You. 91 " Catherine, he 
who loves Me loves those whom I love." 'Christ's 
favorites are little children and the poor ; and these 
also were objects of predilection for His handmaid, 
Katherine Russell. " Reverend Mother," writes one 
of the Sisters, "was the children's best and dearest 



l8o MARY BAPTIST RUSSELL 

friend. She made it a point to answer all their letters. 
When hardly able to go, she insisted on being present 
at the Monthly Roll of Honor." 

I have striven to make this account of a holy and 
useful life as much as possible a mosaic of testimonies 
more impartial than a brother's could claim to be. 
And, therefore, I will now bring it to an end by taking 
a phrase or two from various letters written after her 
death, both by those who knew her intimately within 
or without the walls of her convent, and by those who 
were almost strangers to her. 

The one who was nearest to her by birth and like- 
ness of disposition and vocation, though far separated 
from her by that sublime vocation through much the 
greater part of their lives, wrote a fortnight after the 
cablegram had brought us the news of her death : 
' ' Glory be to God, He enabled her to do great things 
for Him, and the purifying five weeks — powerless, 
speechless, blind — I trust have left little for the merci- 
ful fires of purgatory to do." On the 6th of Novem- 
ber following, one of her own Community writes : 
" To-day is the third Month's Mind of Reverend 
Mother's death, and it seems like years since she was 
with us. I am sure she is happy in the company of 
her divine Spouse, whom she served so faithfully and 
is looking down upon us, and will obtain for us many 
favors." 

And another, " Each day we miss our dear Mother 
more and more. Her illness seemed but a day, but 
since the funeral it seems years. I find myself saying : 
' O my Mother, will you not intercede with the Sacred 
Heart for us ? ' Yes, we feel that she is now enjoying 
the vision of that God, whom she loved and served so 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. l8l 

well. She was a saint, and the people revered her as 
such. During the days her remains were in the 
chapel thousands came to pay their last respects and 
to touch her with medals, beads, etc. ... A few days 
ago I found a letter which our dear one wrote to me 
when I was in East Oakland, informing us that our 
dear Mother Mary Borgia was dying. In it she re- 
marked : ' Once again we have the lesson — do what 
you can for your soul and eternity while you have 
health ; when we are sick, w 7 e can do little, but we 
then show what we are. ' I could not but reflect back 
on her own case. Yes, dear darling Mother showed 
what she was — the same calm, patient, submissive and 
resigned spirit she had always shown. She would take 
whatever we gave her, and by motioning with her eyes 
or hand show that she wished us to give part of what 
she was getting to any Sister who happened to be 
present. This, was an old practice of hers." 

The author of ' ' Leaves from the Annals of the 
Sisters of Mercy," wrote to the author of these leaves 
as follows : "I have just read a description of the more 
than royal obsequies of your saintly and eminently 
charitable sister (may she rest in peace ! ) and my 
thoughts turn to you and your loved Mother Emman- 
uel in Newry as those who feel most keenly and grieve 
most deeply for the great loss we have all sustained in 
the death of our dearly loved Mother M. Baptist. For 
myself, I have no words to describe my grief. 
Humanly speaking, I could not have a greater loss. 
For almost two score years we loved each other in 
God, and interchanged thoughts and mutually sought 
of each other advice and direction in matters which all 
outsiders could not readily understand. I never knew 



1 82 MARY BAPTIST RUSSEU. 

a more generous, charitable soul. A Sister of ours, 
who knew her in San Francisco, wrote to me from 
Pensacola : ' She was one of God's heroines. Her good 
acts go into the millions.' She is a great loss every 
way. Being the oldest religious in California as to 
residence, she was looked up to by all, and her example 
and influence for good were powerful." 

Mr. Richard White, of San Francisco, brother of 
the late Dr. Dudley White, of Dublin, speaks of hav- 
ing attended the obsequies on August 9 : " The last 
time I was in this chapel Mother Russell wa^ with me, 
and I could not but think of something she then told 
me. One of the nuns was dying in the hospital, 
another nun of the same family had died a short time 
previously, and a surviving sister in the world had 
remarked : ' Well, that is the last of our family who 
will go into the Sisters of Mercy to die off in that 
manner ; ' and Mother Russell added : ' As if any- 
thing could be happier than such a death.' Dear 
Father, I wish I could describe to you how much 
Mother Russell was beloved by those who knew her, 
and how much she was respected by every one in the 
city. In over a quarter of a century that I have been 
in San Francisco no death of any one in religion has 
created the profound impression that the death of 
Mother Russell has done." 

Mrs. Margaret Weston, of Philadelphia, seems to 
have seen Mother Baptist only in a passing way as a 
visitor from the East. "Though my acquaintance 
with her was so brief, I was more deeply impressed 
with the nobility, humility and loveliness of her char- 
acter than I was ever before with any one whom I 
have met. She was so simply, genuinely good. How 



PIONKKR SISTER OF MKRCY IN CALIFORNIA. 1 83 

sad it was to lose her presence and the wisdom of her 
counsel ! May her mantle descend upon her successor, 
and may her Godlike charity and contempt of money 
be an inheritance among you." 

I am not sure that the writer of the following, Dr. 
C. G. Kenyon, is a Catholic : 

11 1 wish, in the strongest possible language, to ex- 
press the feeling entertained by thousands of residents 
of this city of sympathy for the Sisters of your Com- 
munity, for the loss they have suffered in the death of 
Mother Russell. During the period of three years 
that I occupied the position of Resident Physician of 
the Hospital, I was a witness to her great worth, not 
only as to her superiority in mental attainments, but 
in the Christian graces of charity and universal love 
for suffering humanity. During that time I acquired 
a feeling of reverence for her that time has not 
dimmed. Mother Russell was a tower of strength in 
this city, and her death is a public loss. I beg to in- 
trude upon your sorrow at this time to offer this 
tribute to her memory." 

Father R. E. Kenna, S. J., writes thus to Mother 
Columba : " I need not tell you how deeply I sym- 
pathize with the grief -stricken children of the good, 
gentle and great-hearted Mother Russell. She was a 
grand soul, and well worthy to be one of the pioneers 
of Holy Church in this western land. Gentle as a 
little child, she was brave and resolute as a Crusader. 
Prudence itself, yet she was fearless in doing good to 
the needy, and in advancing the interests of religion. 
All who met her were forced to admire ; and those 
who knew her best loved her most. It was my happy 
lot to know her since 1864, and I had many dealings 



184 MARY BAPTIST RUSSELL 

with her ; and my admiration and profound esteem 
ever grew with the years. She was a saintly soul, 
with a wondrous allotment of common sense and prac- 
tical zeal. We should thank Our L,ord for giving to 
our young State such a wonderful example of religious 
virtue and heroic self-sacrifice." 

A Paulist Father, the Rev. A. P. Doyle, writes : 
' ' I feel her loss as keenly as though she were of my 
own kith and kin, for she was associated with my 
earliest recollections of devoted religious work in San 
Francisco. There are few figures that stand out as 
prominently as hers in the history of the past forty 
years, and fewer still on whose bier are heaped the 
benedictions of the poor and unfortunate more abun- 
dantly than on hers. She goes down to her grave 
with the consciousness of having rounded out, in the 
fullest measure, years of usefulness for the Church and 
for poor humanity. She goes not unattended to her 
reward. A cloud of witnesses follow her to testify to 
her very great charity. It will be some consolation to 
her bereaved children to realize that though she is 
gone, her spirit still lives and will continue to make 
fruitful their lives." 

Mrs. Mary A. O' Sullivan speaks of the tide of 
' ' sympathy that has been poured out by the whole 
city for the loss of the great, good Mother of the Poor, 
whom God has taken to her throne in heaven. Ah ! 
Sister, was there ever another like her, so gentle, so 
tender, so sympathetic, so big-hearted, so gay and 
light-hearted ? And that rich contralto voice, and 
those beautiful grey eyes ; 'tis sure we shall never look 
on her like again. And now she has left you all, sor- 
rowing and lonesome. But, ah ! if we were good 



PIONKKR SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 1 85 

Christians, 'tis singing canticles we ought to be that 
the Bride has gone to her Bridegroom, and is enjoying 
the happiness of heaven. Little did she have to atone 
for. Possibly she may have had to say, ' Lord, I loved 
the poor too much ; ' and inasmuch as He Himself 
became a fool through love, He will not have found it 
hard to forgive her." 

Miss Harriet M. Skidmore, to whom the Catholic 
literature of America owes a volume marked by deep 
poetic feeling, pure taste and tender piety, paid her 
tribute to the memory of one of whom she says : 
' ' For many years I have been privileged to call her 
friend, and her death leaves in my heart (as in the 
almost numberless hearts to whom she was so wonder- 
fully endeared) a sorrowful void that will never be 
filled until, by God's grace, we shall meet her in the 
Eternal Kingdom of His Love." Miss Skidmore calls 
her affectionate elegy Mulier Fortis, for she para- 
phrases the thirty-first chapter of Proverbs which is 
quoted on Mother Baptist's memorial cross. 

The last witness I shall bring forward is another 
foundress, in even a stricter sense of that title. 
Mother Magdalen Taylor, 1 with the co-operation of 
the saintly and gifted Lady Georgiana Fullerton, has 
established many convents of the Poor Servants of the 
Mother of God, modeled (with modifications accord- 
ing to local wants) on an Institute founded in Poland 
by a holy layman, Edmund Bojanowski, who died in 
1 87 1. There are convents of this congregation in 
Rome, London, Blackburn, etc., and in Ireland, at 



1 Since the above lines were written Mother Magdalen Taylor 
has passed to her reward, on June 9th. 



1 86 MARY BAPTIST RUSSELL 

Carrigtwohill, at IyOUghlinstown Workhouse, and St. 
Joseph's Asylum for Aged Females in Portland Row, 
Dublin. Miss Taylor has published many pleasant 
and edifying books, beginning with a record of her 
experiences as an Anglican nurse during the war in 
the Crimea, at which time she was received into the 
Church by the Rev. William Ronan, S. J., who was 
acting as Army Chaplain. Hence the reference in 
her letter to her conversation with Mrs. Bridgeman at 
Scutari : 

' ' How sorry I am you have lost your dear and good 
sister ! What a long life of excellence hers has been ! 
What a reward is hers for sacrifices made, souls 
gained, Our L,ord loved ! I never met her, but I 
seemed always to know her from hearing so much 
about her. Mother Francis Bridgeman was never 
weary of the subject, and so I used to hear of her by 
the shores of the Bosphorus and in the garden of Kin- 
sale. Your affectionate heart must feel the pang, but 
the sweet picture of her whole life will console you." 

' ' We place Catherine McAuley in the first rank 
among foundresses ; unsurpassed by any of them in 
varied intelligence, in strong practical sense, in clear 
insight, and in what seems to us true heroic virtue." 
What Dr. Orestes Brownson said of Mother Mary 
Catherine I would dare, within due measure, to say of 
her daughter, Mary Baptist Russell. Though she did 
not found a new religious institute, she did part of the 
work and had many of the attributes of a model 
foundress, both in heart and head ; for both head and 
heart are needed in those who are called to band to- 
gether their fellows in some heroic enterprise and so to 
merit in a transcendent degree the fulfilment of that 



PIONEER SISTER OF MERCY IN CALIFORNIA. 187 

promise : " They who instruct many unto justice shall 
shine like stars for perpetual eternities." (Dan. 
xii. , 3.) God alone knows how many souls have been 
and will be influenced by the gentle ministry of Mary 
Baptist Russell, Pioneer Sister of Mercy in California 
— how many have been drawn to God by her directly 
or indirecth^, through her own efforts and prayers or 
through those who worked with her and those who 
will continue her work through the coming century or 
centuries. A life and character like hers might well 
convert an atheist from his hideous creed to a belief in 
goodness and heaven and God. 

* * * 

This sketch was begun at the suggestion of Mother 
Baptist's eldest brother, Lord Russell of Killowen, 
Chief Justice of England. I little thought that he 
would die before it was finished. On the 10th of 
August, 1900, he closed a life of great public utility 
and great private virtue by a most edifying Christian 
death, two }^ears after his beloved sister. May they 
rest in peace. 



MAR 19 1901 



